PODCAST: After 5 years, anti-Semitism czar says no improvement for EU Jews – yet

This week on The Times of Israel’s weekly podcast, Times Will Tell, we jump across the pond to Europe where we speak with Katharina von...

Europe Must Become a Global Climate Power

BRUSSELS – The world is eagerly watching the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and looking forward to a return to normalcy after a year of lockdowns....

History at the Barricades

Jewish community shaped by Inquisition opens Portugal’s first Holocaust museum

JTA — Portugal has opened its first Holocaust museum, built in the northern city of Porto by members of a Jewish community that was founded by...

Joe Biden’s inauguration was replete with anxiety, and a lot of it was Jewish

WASHINGTON (JTA) — I walked to US President Joe Biden’s inauguration. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transport Authority closed 13 downtown...

Avril Haines confirmed as Biden’s director of national intelligence

JTA — The US Senate confirmed Avril Haines to be the first woman to lead the intelligence community, making her President Joe Biden’s first...

Antisemitism is on the march from Kuwait to Tunisia

Antisemitism is on the march. From the Tunisian President’s recent remarks blaming the country’s unrest on “thieving Jews”, to Kuwait’s top...

Israel's Population Is Growing, and Its Infrastructure Isn't Keeping Up

Landmark year starts as treaty to ban nuke arms comes into force

A landmark year has started for the international movement to end the era of collective stupidity when nations threaten others with nuclear...

Norman Golb, pioneering Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish history scholar, dies at 92

JTA — Norman Golb, a pathbreaking academic who broadened scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls and unearthed a history of Jews in Medieval France,...

Biden orders expanded aid to address growing hunger crisis in US amid pandemic

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President Joe Biden is ordering an expansion of government benefits for hungry Americans, after the coronavirus pandemic...

Room where it didn’t happen: US mediators reveal failed Israel-PLO peace talks

Why, after more than a century of bloody conflict, have Israelis and Palestinians failed to reach a peace agreement? Israeli director Dror Moreh...

The Eighth WPK DPRK Congress

From January 5 to January 13, the 8th congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) was held in North Korea, which marked a series of major...

COVID-19: Japan faces moment of truth PREMIUM

Documentary highlights the ‘Human Factor’ in Israel-Palestinian peace talks

AP — Ready for a documentary about three decades of agonizing fits and starts of the Middle East peace process, from the perspective of US...

The traumas of oppression and freedom

Parashat Bo Parashat Bo opens with the final plagues. Locusts devastate the remaining vegetation of Egypt. Darkness so thick that the rabbis tell...

Collecting bad wines

Ric Elias was among the passengers on the plane that Captain ‘Sully’ Sullenberger safely landed in the Hudson back in January of 2009. Determined...

Achieving the hard grade (Daf Yomi Pesachim 62)

Embed from Getty Images “Rabbi Yohanan took a clod of dirt and threw it at him In the middle of the today’s exposition on the details of...

COVID-19. It’s all about behavior!

Vaccines are about 90% effective, depending on the data one reads, the type of mutation, and other factors. That means about one in ten vaccinated...

Amorphous time

The notion of time becomes remarkably amorphous in early chapters of the Book of Exodus, referred to in generalities, instead of specifics. Exodus...

Gulf slave society

The six city-states on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf, each formerly a sleepy, pristine fishing village, are now all glitzy and futuristic...

(GLOBALNA ARENA) Fantazijska tovarna laži

Od 6. januarja, ko je množica podpornikov Donalda Trumpa vdrla v ameriški Kapitol, so več deset izgrednikov že obtožili. Trump, ki je spodbudil...

Biden names Jessica Rosenworcel, a net neutrality champion, as acting FCC chair

JTA — US President Joe Biden has named Jessica Rosenworcel, a champion of net neutrality, to serve as acting chair of the Federal Communications...

Biden orders mask-wearing, travel clampdown in new war on COVID

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President Joe Biden on Thursday tightened mask-wearing rules and ordered quarantine for people flying into the United States,...

Islamic State claims Baghdad twin bombing at market that killed 32, wounded 110

BAGHDAD — The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a twin suicide bombing that killed 32 people and wounded 110 at a crowded market in...

Duterte pushes the Philippines closer to Marcos-era martial-law

Revival of 'red-tagging' has set the country back decades

Dating, zits and bigotry: UK’s 1st YA novel to cover anti-Semitism gets it right

LONDON — With a fiction track record of writing about “crime and money and sex and drugs” for teenagers, British journalist Keren David has...

Jewish Harvard Medical School professor dies climbing in Pakistan’s mountains

(JTA) — A prominent Jewish doctor in Boston died this week while attempting a challenging ascent in the mountains of Pakistan. Alex Goldfarb, an...

Israel aced the vaccine rollout. But most of the world should learn from Vietnam

For most of 2020, the Southeast Asian country has kept the pandemic under control. Until late July, it had managed to keep the total case tally in...

Undercover Chabadniks

I’m a black-hatter, one of those Chabadniks who would love you to put on Tefillin (it will just take a minute). You might avert your gaze and...

China's vaccine diplomacy and Turkey's choice

It is rather odd that Ankara has bought 50 million doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine, which is anything but cheap and its trials are still ongoing....

1st treaty to ban nuclear weapons enters into force, ratified by just 61 nations

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The first-ever treaty to ban nuclear weapons entered into force on Friday, hailed as a historic step to rid the world of...

Defeat of genocide amendment is not a cause for despair

Last Tuesday was a good day for progress on tackling the genocide of the Uyghurs. In one of his very last acts as United States Secretary of State,...

I support the IHRA definition and you should too

Anti-Israel activists at Florida State University (FSU) are working to reverse the university’s earlier decision to adopt the International...

Can Religious and Secular Jews in Israel Get Along?

What message does the book “Letters to Talia” have to offer us today?  Doing a Weekly Podcast on Jewish Authors is quite a challenge. This week...

Now that Trump has gone, will truth return?

Donald J. Trump, one of the most controversial presidents in American history, has had to finally exit the stage. His prefacing everything with...

Back from the brink or brinkmanship by Campaign Against Antisemitism?

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) was established in 2014. Its foundation grew out of extreme frustration with some of the policies...

Anti-corruption CIO kicks off

Political neutrality and independence key to success Kim Jin-wook started work Friday as the inaugural head of the new Corruption Investigation...

Letters to the Editor: Biden, Listen to B’Tselem

What would Leo Szilard make of reluctance over anti-nuke treaty?

There once was a Hungarian-born scientist who succeeded in persuading the United States to develop atomic bombs, but failed to stop the bombs from...

Biden and Trump deliver vastly different messages

Joe Biden’s inauguration last week was the most heavily guarded in memory: Washington’s entire National Mall was fenced off; numerous military...

Global cooperation in the age of COVID-19

The deployment of COVID-19 vaccines brings hope that the onslaught of the virus will soon cease, but the unsettled world within which the virus...

Navalny’s return: But do most Russians even care about the attempt on his life?

MOSCOW – Russia’s main opposition leader Alexei Navalny is disturbing Russia’s laziest month. As in Soviet times, the New Year holiday...

Israeli interpretation on the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring

The Israeli political, security and research decision-making circles have recently shown great interest in the tenth anniversary of the outbreak of...

McConnell calls to push Trump impeachment trial to February

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is proposing to push back the start of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial to February to...

Health experts blame Trump administration failures for US vaccine shortages

AP — Public health experts Thursday blamed COVID-19 vaccine shortages around the US in part on the Trump administration’s push to get states to...

Biden names Massachusetts official Steph Pollack to senior roads post

WASHINGTON (JTA) — US President Joe Biden named Stephanie Pollack, the Massachusetts transportation secretary known for her ability as a Democrat...

Zagate denarne politike ECB

Dve zaporedni gospodarski krizi v zadnjih desetih letih sta v temeljih pretresli prevladujočo strategijo denarne politike za obvladovanje...

Ahdit Tatim’ein: Proudly shot twice in Shefa-Amer!

  Earlier this week, I received my second shot of the Pfizer vaccine in the nearby small Arab city of Shefa-Amer. It was once a mixed city with...

A Message of Hope

Passover is, probably, the most joyful of our festivals. This has to do not only with an overall feeling of finally awakening nature but also with...