A flood-damaged medieval synagogue in Prague. A shul in Shanghai used by World War II Jewish refugees. The oldest synagogue in Rio de Janeiro. These sites were among this year’s recipients of restoration grants from the World Monument Fund. The fund’s Jewish Heritage Grant Program has announced 14 grants for this year, totaling nearly $236,000…. More ▸
Before World War II, this city — then part of Poland and home to that country’s third largest Jewish population — boasted as many as 16 Jewish theater companies. Earlier this month, Lvov — now in Ukraine — was reminded of this page of its rich Jewish cultural history when troupes from all across the… More ▸
Seymour Rexite, a longtime Yiddish theater performer, died Monday in New York at 91. Rexite, a child sensation as a singer in Poland, began appearing in theaters on New York’s Second Avenue soon after he came to the United States in 1920. He and his wife, actress Miriam Kressyn, had their own radio shows on… More ▸
Zypora Spaisman, one of the mainstays of post-World War II Yiddish theater, died May 18 at 86. Spaisman, who supported herself by working as a recreation director at senior centers, earned several awards for her acting with the Folksbiene Theater. More ▸
Walking into Lillian Lux’s Lower East Side home is like entering a museum of Yiddish theater. The apartment holds a photo of Lux and her husband — the late Yiddish actor Pesach’ke Burstein — from an appearance in Argentina in the late 1930s. There also is a picture of Lux, Burstein and their actor-son, Mike,… More ▸
It’s a shivery winter Shabbat evening and Emanuelis Zingeris is immersed in a spiritual moment at Europe’s largest synagogue. That would be normal enough, except that the Great Synagogue was destroyed decades ago and Zingeris, totally unfazed by the Baltic chill, stands outside facing the once-holy site, which now houses a Soviet-style kindergarten and a… More ▸
On a Friday evening a couple of years ago, a group of Chasidim sat down for a festive Shabbat dinner at King’s Hotel — the only kosher hotel in Budapest. The group, many of them from Brooklyn, had stopped off in the Hungarian capital during a pilgrimage to celebrate the Bar Mitzvah of their rabbi’s… More ▸
Lithuania is commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust by helping to fund an exhibit of paintings by Samuel Bak, a Lithuanian-born Holocaust survivor. The show, housed in both the State Art Museum and the Gaon Jewish State Museum, features more than 100 of Bak’s works from 1942-2001. Bak, 68, now lives in Boston. Boston’s… More ▸
This Chanukah, Warsaw’s Jews are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the only synagogue in Warsaw that survived the Holocaust — a synagogue that is today a symbol of efforts to revive Jewish life in the Polish city. The Nozyk Synagogue “is still a living synagogue today, utilized not only for daily and holiday prayers, but… More ▸
The following are the winners of the 51st annual National Jewish Book Awards. The awards will be presented by the Jewish Book Council in New York on March 29. FICTION “The Human Stain,” by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin) NON-FICTION “Jew Vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry,” Samuel G. Freedman (Simon &… More ▸
Opinion
We have seen the future, and it looks Orthodox