(JTA) – The state of Arkansas has paid $500 it had promised to a Jewish doctor, after withholding the payment for months because of the doctor’s refusal to sign a pledge promising not to boycott Israel. The payment came after public pressure on the state to process the payment. The doctor, a longtime pro-Palestinian activist, plans to donate the money to the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace. Steve Feldman, a dermatologist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, was entitled to the honorarium from the state after delivering a Zoom lecture in February to the ..read more

(JTA) – Polish-Canadian historian Jan Grabowski was about to deliver a lecture in Warsaw Tuesday related to his battle against efforts by Polish leaders to suppress uncomfortable truths about the history of antisemitism in the country before and during the Holocaust.  But before Grabowski could get started, a far-right Polish lawmaker with a record of antisemitic statements stormed the speaker’s podium, smashing the microphone, knocking over loudspeakers, and yanking cables, according to Notes from Poland, an independent local outlet. Grzegorz Braun, of the Confederation party ..read more

HAIFA, Israel — Shortly after her 13-year-old son Shahak’s death by suicide, Anat Feldman’s family, following a Jewish tradition, began collecting smooth stones to leave at his grave.  Courtesy of Feldman family Then she began to paint the stones into vividly colorful ladybugs — because Shahak loved The Beatles, and a ladybug is a type of beetle. At her kitchen table, Feldman has transformed about 100 stones into googly-eyed ladybugs which she, family and friends have left along walking paths and other places where people are likely to pick them up, in Israel and abroad. On each of the la ..read more

A group of Republican House members, including the two GOP Jews in the body, have filed legislation that would punish colleges found to have promoted antisemitism and anti-Zionism on campus. The “Stop Anti-Semitism on College Campuses Act” was introduced by Rep. Michael Lawler, a freshman from New York’s Hudson Valley whose district includes a significant number of Jews in Rockland County. The move comes after a graduating student harshly criticized Israel in a speech at the City University of New York’s law school graduation earlier this month. Some also charge that her anti-Zionism crossed i ..read more

Sharon is a film producer who one day finds herself sleeping on the floor of her office on a pile of her clothes. Ella is a costume designer mending the ripped Chanel dress of her lover’s widow. Neither are OK, but both are coming to understand something fundamental: Life is messy — and an artistic life in Israel all the more so. Sharon (Moran Rosenblatt), is the central character of Eitan Anner’s The Good Person. The title is not a reference to her altruism, it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to Bertolt Brecht’s play The Good Person of Szechwan, concerning the moral compromise of a sex ..read more

This year, the French government marked the arrival of D-Day two weeks early. This had nothing to do, however, with next week’s official commemoration next week of the 79th anniversary of the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy. Instead, it had to do with the consternation President Emmanuel Macron caused last week when he declared that a “process of decivilization” now threatened France. This D-word did not mean that totalitarian armies were massing on France’s borders. Instead, the phrase cropped up during a discussion with a small group of intellectuals Macron had invited to dine at t ..read more

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is taking steps to police its collection for stolen and looted art and artifacts. It’s a move that comes after pressure from law enforcement and the art world, as well as an investigation this March by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that found over 1,000 objects in the museum’s collection with provenances tied to people with criminal histories in antiquities trading. In an article posted to the museum’s site, Met director Max Hollein announced an initiative to further investigate the provenance of works in its collection, including hiri ..read more

(JTA) — On Wednesday morning, Alfred Moses, 94, sat in a small white armchair at a round wooden table in a Manhattan office building as a historian gingerly turned the pages of a more than 1,000-year-old book in front of him. Two weeks earlier, Moses had paid a record-setting sum for the book — more than $38 million in total. But this was the first time he had ever seen it. The book was the Codex Sassoon, the world’s oldest nearly-complete copy of the Hebrew Bible. That morning, in Sotheby’s Upper East Side office, Sharon Mintz, the auction house’s senior Judaica specialist, was giving Moses a ..read more

אין שײַכות מיטן הײַיאָריקן אָפּמערקן דעם יאָרצײַט פֿון שלום־עליכם, האָב איך געפֿאָרשט די ייִדישע פּרעסע פֿון כּלערלײ לשונות‏ און לענדער במשך פֿון די ערשטע יאָרן נאָכן שרײַבערס פּטירה. ‏  האָט זיך מיר אײַנגעגעבן צו געפֿינען דעם אַרטיקל, „צום אָנדענק פֿון שלום־עליכם“, פֿאַרעפֿנטלעכט ‏דעם 21סטן יולי 1916 (אַ פּאָר חדשים נאָך זײַן פּטירה) אין דער פֿראַנצײזיש־שפּראַכיקער צײַטונג La Libert ..read more

I’ve long held to the belief that Massachusetts, the state I’ve chosen to live in — have lived in for 45 years — is, if not the most progressive state in the country, right up there.  It’s true that we elect moderate Republicans (remember them?) like Charlie Baker or Bill Weld to the governorship once in a while. But we voted for George McGovern in 1972 — the only state to do so — and we gave America Tip O’Neill, Elizabeth Warren, John Kerry, Barney Frank and Ted Kennedy. I’ve always seen myself as left-of-center, not radically so, but decidedly. It goes back to my childhood and upbringin ..read more