Category Archives: Judaism

Penny Wong says timing of Australia’s reversal on West Jerusalem ‘regrettable’

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Foreign affairs minister admits poor timing of announcement on Jewish holiday and promises never to play politics on the issue

Penny Wong says she deeply regrets the timing of the government’s announcement that it was reversing recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a decision that coincided with a Jewish holiday.

In the wake of criticism from several prominent Jewish community leaders and a rebuke from the Israeli prime minister, the foreign affairs minister has written an article for Australian Jewish News promising never to play politics on the issue.

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Jewish groups blindsided by Labor’s reversal of recognition of West Jerusalem as Israeli capital

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Prominent Jewish community leaders in Australia say Albanese government’s withdrawal of recognition ‘a gratuitous insult’ – but criticism is not universal

Several Jewish community leaders say they were blindsided by the Albanese government’s decision to reverse recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, describing the handling of the issue as “shoddy” and “a gratuitous insult”.

A Labor parliamentarian has also privately said the government “mishandled” the sensitive issue and should not be “making foreign policy on the fly” after Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the Australian ambassador to demand an explanation.

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Kosher phone dispute grips ultra-Orthodox Tel Aviv suburb

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An opaque council controls smartphone access for Israel’s Haredim population, but many are making forays online anyway

Tel Aviv’s booming science and technology industry, bolstered by graduates of elite army intelligence units, has earned Israel the nickname “start-up nation”.

Yet in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox suburb just a few miles east of Tel Aviv’s skyscrapers, a vicious fight is being waged over whether smartphones are compatible with traditional Jewish law, and who should have the power to decide on internet access.

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Pope Francis orders online release of second world war-era ‘Jewish’ files

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Vatican archive of 2,700 cases of requests for help by Jewish people renews debate on Pope Pius XII legacy

Pope Francis has ordered the online publication of 170 volumes of files relating to Jewish people from the recently opened Pope Pius XII archives, amid renewed debate about the legacy of the second world war-era pope.

The archive of 2,700 cases “gathers the requests for help sent to Pope Pius XII by Jewish people … after the beginning of Nazi and fascist persecution”, said the Vatican’s secretary for relations with states, Paul Richard Gallagher, in a statement.

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Israeli police and Palestinians clash at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem

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Red Crescent says at least 42 injured at site revered by Muslims and Jews as police fire rubber bullets at youths throwing rocks

Israeli police have fired rubber bullets and stun grenades towards Palestinian youths throwing rocks in the latest outbreak of violence at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, a site revered by Muslims and Jews.

At least 42 Palestinians were injured in the early morning clashes on Friday at Islam’s third-holiest site, the Palestine Red Crescent said.

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‘No one really believed it would happen’: first Jewish Ukrainian refugees arrive in Israel

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Influx of 100,000 refugees from the war zone expected as members of the diaspora exercise the country’s law of return

A red carpet, applause and dozens of blue and white flags were waiting for the first Jewish Ukrainian refugees to arrive in Israel as part of a huge rescue operation triggered by Moscow’s invasion.

About 400 people on four flights from Poland, Moldova and Romania landed in Tel Aviv on Sunday, among them 100 children who had been living in a Jewish orphanage in the northern city of Zhytomyr. Most of the new arrivals were visibly relieved to have reached safety; as is tradition, several people touched and kissed the ground after disembarking.

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Love in a time of terror: the tragic couples who married at a Dutch Nazi transit camp

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‘Aunt Annie’ was killed in the Holocaust – but not before marrying her sweetheart in captivity. Now her great-niece has found 260 other couples who did the same

Saskia Aukema knew little about her great-aunt Annie, who was murdered during the Holocaust. All she knew was that Annie had declined to go into hiding like her siblings, and continued working as a hospital nurse, even after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands began in May 1940.

“That was the family story: this was the woman who didn’t hide and chose to be with her patients. That was all I knew… this line, this one sentence,” she told the Observer.

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Helen Mirren says questions over playing Golda Meir ‘utterly legitimate’

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Maureen Lipman criticised decision to cast Mirren as former Israeli prime minister as she is not Jewish

Dame Helen Mirren has said questions over the choice to have her play Israel’s first female prime minister, Golda Meir, are “utterly legitimate”.

The Academy award-winning actress said there was “a discussion to be had” about the suitability of certain actors for certain roles.

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‘Wisdom and incredible strength’: the exhibition showing the lives built by Holocaust survivors

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A new collection of photographs reveals the lives survivors have built and the legacies they have passed down the generations

The film and photographic images that emerged from the Holocaust, often in a blurrily dark monochrome, instantly became the visual definition of evil in the 20th century. So to set this brutal iconography against the cheerily crisp colours of modern English suburban homes in springtime – complete with armchairs, French doors on to patios, bright tulips in pots – might risk accusations of superficiality, or worse.

But when the people in these apparently mundane locations are themselves survivors of the Holocaust, the sheer joyful fact of their existence becomes a triumphant rejoinder to the unimaginable cruelty and depravity of three-quarters of a century ago. The new images are collected together in Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors, which opens later this week to coincide with world Holocaust day, at the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) gallery in Bristol after a showing at the Imperial War Museum in London.

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Helen Mirren: is the Israeli icon Golda Meir a role too far for the dame who does it all?

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She has played the Queen and a gangster’s moll but her latest casting has sparked controversy

Nobody is quite what they seem. And actors? Well, for actors that’s the job. Dame Helen Mirren, as well as being herself for 76 years, has by now notably been Lady Macbeth, a London gangster’s moll, a thief’s wife, an alcoholic cop, an action hero, Prospero and also a British monarch at least four times. Now she takes on Golda Meir, the late prime minister of Israel, in a new biopic, and the casting has caused controversy.

The choice of a non-Jewish actor to star as a woman with such a prominent place in the history of Israel has prompted irritation on both sides of the argument. Another illustrious dame, Maureen Lipman, was first to raise the issue – or “blast” Mirren, according to some reports last week – and then Dame Esther Rantzen defended the director’s choice. It is the latest instance of a ‘Jewface’ row, a backlash to the assignment of a major Jewish role to someone not from that minority background.

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Frozen in time: clock that tells tale of Jewish resistance in wartime Amsterdam

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Artefacts from hideout of family sent to Auschwitz death camp with Anne Frank and her family are put on display in Netherlands

A clock that is the sole surviving object from a second world war Jewish hideout will go on display at Amsterdam’s Dutch Resistance Museum this year.

The round mantelpiece clock may have been one of the last things people saw as they were seized by the Nazis and sent to death camps.

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Bambi: cute, lovable, vulnerable … or a dark parable of antisemitic terror?

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A new translation of Felix Salten’s 1923 novel reasserts its original message that warns of Jewish persecution

It’s a saccharine sweet story about a young deer who finds love and friendship in a forest. But the original tale of Bambi, adapted by Disney in 1942, has much darker beginnings as an existential novel about persecution and antisemitism in 1920s Austria.

Now, a new translation seeks to reassert the rightful place of Felix Salten’s 1923 masterpiece in adult literature and shine a light on how Salten was trying to warn the world that Jews would be terrorised, dehumanised and murdered in the years to come. Far from being a children’s story, Bambi was actually a parable about the inhumane treatment and dangerous precariousness of Jews and other minorities in what was then an increasingly fascist world, the new translation will show.

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Breakfast with Alice Zaslavsky: parsnip and potato latkes – recipe

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Just in time for Hanukkah, the In Praise of Veg author shares her crispy, golden latkes recipe, in celebration of all things fried

Alice Zaslavsky describes her parsnip and potato latkes as “like an edible plate”, but the lacy, crunchy, deep-golden latkes are wonderful even on their own. Once topped with creme fraiche, dill, finely sliced pickled beet or smoked salmon (and roe, if you’re feeling very fancy), they’re more than worthy of a little reverence.

Eating oily, fried foods is a tradition when it comes to celebrating Hanukkah, which begins on 28 November in 2021. Zaslavsky explains: “The reason we cook a lot of oily foods for Hanukkah is because we’re symbolising the [lamp] oil. It was supposed to only last an afternoon and it lasted for eight days, which are the eight days of Hanukkah. So we eat fried doughnuts, we eat fried latkes.

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Half of Britons do not know 6m Jews were murdered in Holocaust

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Survey also finds majority of UK respondents believe fewer people care about Holocaust today than used to

Just over half of Britons did not know that 6 million Jewish people were murdered during the Holocaust, and less than a quarter thought that 2 million or fewer were killed, a new survey has found.

The study also found that 67% of UK respondents wrongly believed that the government allowed all or some Jewish immigration, when in fact the British government shut the door to Jewish immigration at the outbreak of the war.

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Berlin honours couple who helped Jewish families flee Nazi Germany

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Plaque for Malwine and Max Schindler is installed at Pariser Strasse 54 outside couple’s former Berlin home

A Berlin couple who dedicated themselves to spiriting Jewish families and political dissidents out of Nazi Germany via a clandestine network disguised as an English-language tutoring service have been honoured in the German capital for the first time since their story fell into obscurity half a century ago.

A commemorative plaque was installed on Thursday by Berlin authorities at Pariser Strasse 54 in the Wilmersdorf district, outside the former home of Max and Malwine Schindler. Their legacy was rediscovered two years ago through a cache of letters and photographs found in a garden shed in Australia.

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Homecoming show hails artistry and endurance of Sarajevo Haggadah

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Vibrantly illustrated Sephardic Jewish book is believed to have been made in Spain in the 14th century

Seven centuries after it was created, a priceless Sephardic Jewish book whose wine-stained pages have somehow survived exile, the Inquisition, the rise and fall of an empire, two world wars and the Bosnian conflict, is making a homecoming. Of sorts.

The codex, known as the Sarajevo Haggadah after the city where it has been kept since at least 1894, is thought to have been made in north-east Spain in about 1350, possibly as a wedding present to mark the union of two prominent Jewish families.

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Polish appeals court overturns ruling against Holocaust historians

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Case has raised questions about freedom to research Poland’s wartime past

A Polish appeals court has overturned a ruling against two leading Holocaust historians accused of defamation, in a closely watched case that raised questions about the freedom to research Poland’s second world war past.

The civil case was brought against Prof Barbara Engelking and Prof Jan Grabowski for a book they co-edited about the complicity of Catholic Poles in the genocide of Jews during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland.

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Poland’s president signs bill to curb claims on property seized by Nazis

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Move to limit Jewish people’s opportunity to seek restitution sparks furious response from Israel

Poland’s president has decided to sign a bill that would set limits on the ability of Jews to recover property seized by Nazi German occupiers and retained by postwar communist rulers, drawing fury from Israel, which said the law was antisemitic.

“I made a decision today on the act, which in recent months was the subject of a lively and loud debate at home and abroad,” Andrzej Duda said in a statement published on Saturday. “After an in-depth analysis, I have decided to sign the amendment.”

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Anger as Poland plans law that will stop Jews reclaiming wartime homes

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Daughter of Holocaust survivor pledges to continue her fight for family property seized by Nazi occupiers

A few years ago, Shoshana Greenberg stood outside a building in Lodz, Poland, once owned by her family, with an old photograph in her hands and tears running down her face.

Greenberg, now 74 and living in Tel Aviv, was on a quest to reclaim property lost during the Holocaust. Her father was head of a prominent, wealthy Jewish family in Lodz that owned industrial buildings, residential homes and holiday properties.

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Revealed: the secret trauma that inspired German literary giant

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WG Sebald’s writing on the Holocaust was driven by the anger and distress he felt over his father’s service in Hitler’s army

His books are saturated with despair. Over and over again, his emotionally traumatised characters are caught – inescapably – in plots that doom them to a life of anguish. Often, they kill themselves.

Now, the psychological wounds and suicidal thoughts that blighted WG Sebald’s own life and secretly inspired him to begin writing fiction are to be laid bare for the first time in a forthcoming biography.

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