Travel and Food

By Danny Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — When I read in the local newspapers here that a Jewish novelist born in 1950 in Guatemala was coming to Taipei to attend the recent Taipei book fair as a guest speaker, I quickly sat down and typed out an email and asked if I could interview him […]

TEL AVIV (Press Release) — Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust historian Prof. Saul Friedlander and artificial intelligence pioneer Prof. Marvin Minsky are among the winners of the 2014 Dan David Prize, which annually bestows three awards of $1 million each. The prizes are granted for “proven, exceptional and distinct excellence in the sciences, arts and humanities that

By Rabbi Ben Kamin ENCINITAS, California — Samantha, the third among our four children in a hyphenated family, departed Sunday, Feb. 16,  for six months abroad—in South America. She’s been there before; the mosaic of Mapuche cultures, the agrarian hills and low-lying villages, the Polynesian footprints, the vineyards, the quad-gods and mingled human-animal cosmology, the

By Robert Gluck/JNS.org Amid the celebrations and hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ arrival in America and their appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the man Paul McCartney called “the fifth Beatle” is not often mentioned. But experts say that without him, the Beatles as we know them would not have existed. That

By Anav Silverman TEL AVIV – Along with the much needed rain that drenched Israel this past weekend, Tel Aviv experienced a different kind of rain – chocolates galore – at the city’s annual Chocolate Festival. From chocolate shwarmas and kebabs, to chocolate jewelry, sculptures, and even a chocolate spa, the festival took place at

BERLIN (Press Release)– AJC condemned as a blow against artistic freedom the Berlinale decision to award British film director Ken Loach “The Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement Award.” The Berlinale, the second largest film festival in Europe after Cannes, is co-sponsored by the German government. “It is a disgrace that a prominent German film

NEW YORK (Press Release)–A rabbi, educator and scholar who has led interreligious efforts on behalf of the Reform Judaism movement and has spearheaded Catholic-Jewish dialogue in Chicago has been appointed the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Director of Interfaith Affairs. Rabbi David Fox Sandmel, Ph.D., who most recently served as a Senior Advisor on Interreligious Affairs for

JERUSALEM (WJC)– Actress Natalie Portman is facing protests from disgruntled residents in Israel who are unhappy over her plans to shoot a movie there. The Jerusalem-born US star is working on her directorial debut, A Tale Of Love And Darkness, based on the book by Israeli author Amos Oz, and she has chosen to film

SAN DIEGO (Press Release)– Tom Seidler will be the featured speaker at the February 19, Men’s Club of Beth Israel Dinner Forum. Seidler hails from “baseball royalty.” He is a grandson of Walter O’Malley and a member of the third generation of the O’Malley family that took over ownership of the San Diego Padres in

By Randy Fadem MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay–A previously unknown Yiddish book, Zichronot Fun Yiddischen Legion (Memories of the Jewish Legion) by Moshe Krel,  written, published, and printed in Montevideo, Uruguay in May, 1938,  was discovered by this author at the Astor Judaica Library, Jewish Community Center in La Jolla, in the Spring of 2012. The Library donated