Adam Soclof RSS

is JTA’s Associate Director of Outreach and Partnerships. Follow him on Twitter: @hypersem

Latest

  • Matzah and Mideast diplomacy

    March 11, 2013 12:57pm

    President Obama’s pre-passover trip to Israel — his first as president of the United States — will be kosher for Passover.  The King David Hotel is pushing forward its Passover production schedule to accomodate President Obama’s first visit to Israel while in office. Haaretz blogger Ilene Prusher writes: The entire King David Hotel, where he’ll…

  • The Savoy Hotel attack

    March 3, 2013 4:04pm

      “The staccato of automatic gunfire abruptly ended a quiet evening this correspondent was spending with friends in their flat near the Tel Aviv beachfront last night,” JTA’s Yitzhak Shargil wrote on Mar. 6, 1975. The 1970s were fraught with Arab terrorist attacks against Israeli targets. The Savoy Hotel attack was among the worst such…

  • Hollywood: A ‘liability’ for Jews?

    February 22, 2013 5:55pm

    The notion that Jews control Hollywood is a well known myth, labeled anti-Semitic by the Anti-Defamation League. But in 1933, a rabbi and Zionist leader argued that Jews have a responsibility to improve it. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, Reform rabbi, lay leader and then chairman of the American Zionist Emergency Council, began his critique of Hollywood…

  • Israel’s Prisoner X recalls Marcus Klingberg spy case

    February 15, 2013 4:23pm

    While more information continues to trickle out about Prisoner X, the mysterious man with alleged Mossad ties who hanged himself in Israel’s Ayalon Prison in 2010 and was identified this week by an Australian TV show as Ben Zygier, it’s not the first case of an Israeli spy jailed without public knowledge and under secretive…

  • Depression-era matchmaking: Worse than Hitler?

    February 14, 2013 3:27pm

    Roses are red, Violets are blue, Comparing Jewish matchmakers to Hitler? Whoa, WAY too soon. [[READMORE]]  During the Great Depression, finding true love through a matchmaker, or shadchan, could cost a pretty penny. As JTA writer Harriet Strachstein observed on a visit to the "shotgun," a session with the gefilte love guru cost a pretty penny:…

  • Ex-referee Gallagher drops Holocaust reference on Sky News soccer recap

    February 13, 2013 8:23pm

    Sky News apologized after former English Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher dropped a Holocaust reference while analyzing a soccer match. As a service to athletes and announcers, Holocaust references and sports don’t tend to draw positive coverage. (With the exception of the English national team footballers starring in a Holocaust educational video.) [[READMORE]] That goes…

  • YIVO, National Library of Israel team to acquire Chaim Grade collection

    February 13, 2013 5:42pm

    The literary estate of Chaim Grade will be handed over to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York and the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.

  • Project to shore up ground beneath Auschwitz synagogue

    February 13, 2013 11:25am

    A project to reinforce the ground beneath the only synagogue at the Auschwitz memorial and state museum will begin this spring.

  • Jewish gun violence victims among State of the Union guests

    February 12, 2013 7:55pm

    A number of Jewish victims and relatives of gun violence will attend President Obama’s fifth State of the Union address to Congress. More than twenty gun violence victims will attend as guests of various members of Congress, including: [[READMORE]] Gabrielle Giffords, former Arizona congresswoman who was shot in the head at a 2011 rally and…

  • A kippah clip fit for Bear Grylls

    February 12, 2013 7:00pm

    If Bear Grylls needed a kippah clip, he’d choose this one. The LeatherDOS, designed by Holon Institute of Technology student Yaacov Goldberg, doesn’t stop at fastening your skullcap to your hair. [[READMORE]] The product features a knife on one side, a ruler on the other plus three screwdriver heads, a wrench and a trolley coin…