Author: Glen Berd

Photo: A photograph taken by Faye Schulman, inside a bunker of the Molotov partisan brigade, 1942-1944, Pinsk, Belarus (c) USHMM, courtesy of Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War   Faye Schulman (28 November 1919 - 24 April 2021) was a Jewish partisan photographer, and the only such photographer to photograph their struggle in Eastern Europe during the Second World War. Her full name was Faigel “Faye” Lazebnik Schulman. Faye Schulman (then known as Faigel Lazebnik) as a member of the partisan Resistance in Eastern Poland in 1943.  She was born in Lenin in Eastern Poland (now Western Belarus). After the Nazis invaded Belarus, her family was imprisoned in the Lenin Ghetto. On August 14, 1942, German forces killed 1,850 Jews from the ghetto, including much of Schulman's family. 26 Jews were not killed; The Germans ordered Faye to develop their photographs of the massacre - and she made copies for herself, as evidence.  Schulman was spared because of her photographic skills that she had learned...

Mandy Patinkin Sings These 3 Jewish Prayers to His Dog Every Day Having a sick pet is quite an awful and heart-wrenching experience. As my dog gets older, every vet visit gets more and more stressful — not just because of the bill, which is always a bit of a gut-punch, but because being faced with your pet’s mortality is just so rough. We all want our pets to live forever, even if we know we will almost always outlive them. For beloved Jewish icon Mandy Patinkin — who himself had a bit of a health scare during the pandemic — having his beloved dog, Becky, go through health problems led him to a very Jewish way to cope with his fears for her health: Jewish prayer! In a hilarious and wonderful video on social media, the Jewish actor and Yiddish crooner — who says the Mourner’s Kaddish every day — shared three other Jewish prayers that he says every time he feeds his dog: the Mi Sheberach, the Shema, and the Motzi. Honestly, whenever we think we can’t possibly love...

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — It was 6 a.m. on Aug. 19, 1964 when the phone rang in the Los Angeles apartment of Ivor Davis, the young West Coast correspondent for London’s Daily Express, circulation 4 million. On the other end was the paper’s foreign editor, who told Davis to drive to the airport and catch the 11 a.m. flight to San Francisco. His assignment was to cover that evening’s gig at the Cow Palace by a hot British pop group called the Beatles. For Davis and the band, it would be the start of a hysterical 34-day, 24-city tour across the United States and Canada. Two Jews, the Beatles, and Yom Kippur in New Orleans 50-years after covering the group’s first US tour, author Ivor Davis finally tells all, with plenty of space for manager Brian Epstein “I had unfettered access to the boys … I lived and ate with them, played cards and Monopoly until the early hours of the morning,” Davis recalled. “I...

Harry Klausner was born to a Jewish family in Germany in 1936. Following Kristallnacht his father left for Mandatory Palestine, hoping to be able to bring his wife and two kids shortly thereafter. Harry, who later became Arieh Oz, has only one memory of his life before the Holocaust: The exciting journey at the age of three on the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn (Wuppertal Suspension Railway) over the River Wupper on his way out of Germany. Set to get out at the last stop in the country and cross the river to Holland where his uncle would give refugee documents to him, his sister and mother, German police boarded the train to check passports before the Klausners got off. Little Harry, dressed in a blue sailor uniform, was so excited to see policemen in their uniforms that he shouted out "We're going to Palestine!" "My mother's heartbeat skipped a beat or two," he later recalled in his autobiography, yet the three Klausners made it across and miraculously survived...

The Story of the Star of David The six pointed star represents peace and harmony in Buddhism, while alchemists believed it symbolized nature—how did the Star of David acquire its significance in Judaism? “Something of man’s secret enters into his symbols.” —Gershom Scholem   The Star of David originated long before it was adopted by the Jewish faith and the Zionist movement; it appeared thousands of years ago in the cultures of the East, cultures that use it to this day. In the past, what we know today as the Star of David was a popular symbol in pagan traditions, as well as a decorative device used in first-century churches and even in Muslim culture. But how is the Star of David tied to the fate of the Jewish people? In the Hebrew context, the Star of David is actually referred to as the “Shield of David” (magen David), a phrase first mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, not as a symbol, but as an epithet for God...

Quotes about the Jews: Winston S. Churchill: "Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world. John F. Kennedy: Israel was not created in order to disappear- Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom. David Ben Gurion: "In Israel , in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.” Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: "Energy is the basis of everything. Every Jew, no matter how insignificant, is engaged in some decisive and immediate pursuit of a goal. It is the most perpetual people of the earth.” John Adams: "I will insist the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be...

Story of family saving identical twins from the Shoah revealed in BBC doc Heartfelt tale of George and Peter Summerfield's journey to be reunited with childhood friends who helped rescue them, will be shown on BBC Two’s Saved By A Stranger. Identical twin brothers George and Peter Summerfield - (C) Blink Films - Photographer: Toby Trackman The heartfelt story of how a German family helped to save the lives of identical twins during the Second World War is revealed in BBC Two’s Saved By A Stranger. Presented by Anita Rani, the series sets out to reunite people caught up in traumatic events with those who helped them to get through them. In 1933, twins George and Peter Summerfield were born to a Jewish family in Berlin, six months after Hitler became chancellor of Germany.  The young boys were close friends with the non-Jewish sons of their building’s caretaker, Mr Schädler, and all four would play football together.  But as the Nazi party steadily increased persecution against Jews, life for the...