June 18, 2026

(JEWISH GROUP) A secret bunker, tunnel and a Star of David tell a story of Jewish resistance in a Polish town

A secret bunker, an underground tunnel and an armband bearing the Star of David are among the rare findings in a house in southern Poland that was used by Jews, including young members of the resistance, to hide from the Nazis.

“This armband is a witness, it’s like directly touching that evil which people created for other people,” Karolina Jakoweńko from the Cukerman’s Gate Foundation, which organized the search, told The Associated Press. Seeing it felt like a “jolt,” she said.

Jakoweńko spoke inside a two‑story redbrick house in the town of Bedzin, within the former Jewish ghetto during the World War II. The house served as the site of a “kibbutz” organized by youth from left‑wing Zionist groups — in this case, a network that relied on each other to try to ensure its members survived and resisted the Nazi occupiers.

Each piece of rubble may hide a treasure
In the days before the interview, Jakoweńko and her colleagues cleared the house attic in preparation for renovation, lifting floorboards one by one and collecting rubble in buckets, then carefully examining each handful. Among objects spanning several decades, they discovered a Jewish prayer book from 1934, and the armband bearing the Star of David.

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June 16, 2026

(JEWISH GROUP) 13,000 Jews were driven out of Poland in 1968. Now, some are returning to tell their story.

In March 1968, Rachelle Halpern walked into her university in Szczecin, Poland, and found a group of her classmates gathered around a newspaper. She asked what they were reading about. The answer came: “Zionists.”

Halpern didn’t understand. Who were the Zionists? One classmate said, “The Jews.”

“But I’m a Jew,” said Halpern. Her classmates looked at her in disbelief. She couldn’t be, one said. She had no horns.

Halpern was about to be swept up in a spiral of social and political crises in communist Poland, culminating in a government-sponsored antisemitic campaign that stripped Jews of their jobs, schools and citizenship, forcing some 13,000 to leave the country. Within months, Halpern would find herself renouncing her Polish nationality and leaving everything she knew for a new life in the United States.

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Some music to calm your nerves...

June 15, 2026

Cornell student turns down interview, saying 'not interested in working for a Jew'

A Cornell University student turned down a job interview with a New York company because he found out it is owned by Jews.

In response to New York City startup VryfID contacting him after he applied for a summer internship, Austin Franco wrote back, “Not interested in working for a Jew,” the New York Post reported on Saturday.

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Franco, who reportedly studies industrial and labor relations, followed up with a typo-ridden post to his own X feed in which he tagged Einhorn, and explained his initial application to work at VryfID because “I found out you were Jewish after the fact.”

Addressing Einhorn, he wrote that “My experiences with Jews have not been pleasant, both in person and online. This is not to say I havent had positive experiences, but on the aggregate that is not the case.”

“Obviously, the reactions by your community only serves to further prove my point,” he added.

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June 13, 2026

(JEWISH GROUP) This Israeli filmmaker harshly criticizes his country. Pro-Palestinian activists boycotted him anyway

Earlier this year Nadav Lapid, the award-winning Israeli dissident filmmaker, traveled with his son to Marseille for a screening of his latest film. He fell in love.

“This city reminded me of Tel Aviv, in a way, with the beach and everything,” he recounted Wednesday to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency — referring to the city he no longer lives in, having built a career with movies that take sharp aim at what he calls the “moral abyss” of Israeli society. When a Marseille film festival then invited him to serve on its jury for its upcoming installment in July, he readily accepted.

Then the boycotts started. Last month around a dozen pro-Palestinian filmmakers threatened to pull out of the upcoming Marseille International Film Festival over Lapid’s planned participation because, they said, he had accepted funding from the Israeli government to support his work. (Lapid’s movies, including his latest, have received funding from Israel’s film fund.) Following this, according to the accounts of both Lapid and the festival’s director, the festival had second thoughts about him serving on the jury.

While the festival offered him the opportunity to participate in a public master class instead, Lapid said, the protesters hadn’t relented: “It’s not enough for these people.”

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June 13, 2026

10 years have passed since the massacre at The Pulse

https://www.clickorlando.com/rememberingpulse49/

June 3, 2026

(JEWISH GROUP) How can I live freely as a Jew in a world where strangers rip my mezuzah off my doorframe?

Twice, the mezuzah on my front door was ripped off.

The first time, I was shocked. The second time, I made a decision that still pains me. I did not put it back up.

This was before the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.

That is the part I keep coming back to. The fear did not begin after the Hamas attacks. It was already there, intruding with the quiet calculation of whether a small Jewish symbol on my home made me less safe.

A mezuzah is not a political statement. It makes no argument about a government or a war. It is a sacred object, a marker of memory, a tiny declaration that says: Jews live here. I thought about that mezuzah again recently when the Anti-Defamation League released its annual audit showing that antisemitic physical assaults in the United States reached record highs in 2025. That increase reflects something many Jews already feel in daily life: the slow erosion of ease, the daily calculation of whether to speak up or stay quiet — things I have felt since the first time my mezuzah was violently torn off my doorframe.

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NOTE: This is not me. This is by Gayle Kirschenbaum. I haven't put my secondary door frame one up yet. Still waiting on a prayer scroll.

June 3, 2026

(JEWISH GROUP) The Farhud (video What Happened to Iraq's Jews?)

The outbreak of mob violence against Baghdad Jewry known as the Farhud (Farhud is an Arabic term best translated as “pogrom” or “violent dispossession”) erupted on June 1, 1941. It was a turning point in the history of the Jews in Iraq.

In the 1940s about 135,000 Jews lived in Iraq (nearly 3 percent of the total population), with about 90,000 in Baghdad, 10,000 in Basra, and the remainder scattered throughout many small towns and villages. Jewish communities had existed in this region since the 6th century BCE, hundreds of years before Muslim communities established a presence in Iraq during the 7th century. The Jews shared the Arab culture with their Muslim and Christian neighbors, but they lived in separate communities. Jewish assimilation into Muslim society was rare.

With the establishment of the Iraqi state under the British Mandate in 1921, Jews became full-fledged citizens and enjoyed the right to vote and hold elected office. The Jewish community had between four and six representatives in the Parliament and one member in the Senate. The community was headed by a president, Rabbi Sasson Khedhuri (1933-1949; 1954-1971), an elected council of 60 members, and two executive committees—the spiritual committee for religious issues and the secular committee for managing the secular affairs of the community organizations. Its elite included also high-ranking officials, prominent attorneys and dignitaries, and wealthy merchants. This status of the Jews did not change in 1932, when Iraq gained independence under British informal rule.

In the spring of 1941, Britain was enduring one of its worst periods in World War II. Most of Europe had fallen to the Axis forces, German planes were bombing British cities in the Blitz, and German submarines were exacting a tremendous toll on British shipping. Having driven the British out of Libya, the Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel was camped along the Egyptian border and poised to thrust eastward to the Suez Canal. The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) had driven the British out of Greece and Crete, eliminating their last beachhead on continental Europe. British chances of winning the war appeared slim.

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June 1, 2026

Never Lose Your Smile --Skull

Never Lose Your Smile is a design/meme consisting of the phrase “Never Lose Your Smile” accompanied by the Totenkopf skull image or, more commonly, merely the bottom half of that skull, which obscures its true nature and thus allows the image to pass unnoticed as a white supremacist symbol. The deceptive nature of this design has also allowed extremists to sell clothing, patches, and other items featuring the image on major internet platforms without triggering moderation.

Some Never Lose Your Smile images may also contain the colors or designs of national flags. Other variations use Totenkopf imagery with a slightly different phrase, such as “Never Lose Your Love” or “Never Lose Your Hope.”

Some white supremacists have also used the phrase alone, without the skull, in circumstances such as screen names. However, use of the phrase by itself without a clear white supremacist context should not be taken for granted as hate-related.

White supremacists likely borrowed this concept from older, non-extremist designs that combined the phrase with non-Totenkopf skull images. Use of the “Never Lose Your Smile” slogan in combination with generic skulls or other non-white supremacist images, such as generic clowns, should not be considered hate related.

https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/never-lose-your-smile



"Totenkopf" is German for "death's head" or skull and typically refers to a skull-and-crossbones image. During the Nazi era, Hitler's Schutzstaffel (SS) adopted one particular Totenkopf image as a symbol. Among other uses, it became the symbol of the SS-Totenkopfverbande (one of the original three branches of the SS, along with the Algemeine SS and the Waffen SS), whose purpose was to guard the concentration camps. Many original members of this organization were later transferred into and became the core of a Waffen SS division, the 3rd SS "Totenkopf" Panzer Division, which engaged in a number of war crimes during World War II.

Following the war, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists resurrected the Totenkopf as a hate symbol because of its importance to the SS and it has been a common hate symbol since. It is this particular image of a skull and crossbones that is considered a hate symbol, not any image of a skull and crossbones.

https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/totenkopf

May 29, 2026

(JEWISH GROUP) There is no Pride in excluding Queer Jews

The first time I went back into a Jewish school to speak as an openly queer Jew, it felt like progress: LGBTQIA Jews no longer having to hide one part of ourselves within communities of belonging.

I left school in 2002, one year before Section 28 was repealed. For my entire education, teachers were banned from “promoting homosexuality,” which in practice meant silence: no language, no role models, no reassurance that being Jewish and queer was not a contradiction.

Years later, representing KeshetUK, I spoke with Jewish pupils about being young, Jewish and queer. That conversation happened somewhere that, when I was younger, would have found it almost impossible.

Pride, at its best, should do the same thing. It should say: come as you are. Not as the world finds you convenient. Not as the politics of others require you to be.

In Rome, Pride organisers have refused the participation of Keshet Italia for not taking their stance or accepting Roma Pride’s characterisation of Israel’s war with Hamas. Participation required a “clear and unequivocal stance condemning the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli government.”

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Whatever happened to "intersectionality"?!

May 27, 2026

(JEWISH GROUP) Today, Laveau would have turned 17. (loss of my chihuahua, pics)

I know this might be odd that I am posting this remembrance here, but I feel better doing it this way.

Some of you know I have many chihuahuas. I have lost three in the past few years, Voodoo, then Zatanna, and last year, Marigny. Well, the first Saturday in April, Laveau, our Big Girl, had a stroke and we had to let her go. She was the last of the group we called "The NOLA (New Orleans) Zoo Krewe".

Laveau came to us from Oklahoma while we were living in NOLA. She and her half-sister, Marigny, arrived in late May 2010. She was named after Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. She was a potential mate for Voodoo, so the name was based on that possible paring. Unlike her sister, Laveau was very reserved. She wasn't unfriendly, she just couldn't be bothered with other people or, really, other animals. She was quiet, rarely barked. I also said if she were magically transformed into a person, she would have been one of those "ladies of old", prim, proper, but silently held her ground.

It took her almost a year before she even warmed up to me and my husband! While the other dogs loved sleeping in the bed, she did not. Eventually, she joined everyone else in the bed. She moved through the house silently. For years (and I am not kidding), if she thought you were watching her while she was trying to poop, she would hold it or wander off behind a bush! She never played with toys but loved to watch her sister and the others play. You would turn your head, and there she would be. Without making a sound, she would tuck in and go to sleep next to me or my husband.

She loved when my husband or I came home and would greet us like the others, tail awag, but never barked. She almost always had a serene look on her face, even when she slept.

A few years back she started having some problems. Turned out, she was in kidney failure. We didn't know because she never showed us any signs. We found out through blood tests. I eventually learned to "read between the lines" with her. I could always tell when the others weren't feeling well; not her! Turns out her left kidney was malformed, and the other one wasn't much better. So, we started with a variety of medicines and treatments and her bloodwork greatly improved. This was 8 years ago! Various remedies and doggie dialysis, and she did quite well. The doctors said if they didn't know about the diagnosis, they would think this was a tip-top dog.

This last year, she started losing weight. She was called "Big Girl" not because she was overweight, but because she was solid muscle. We knew the time was coming. She had a vet appointment the last week of March and her values had all improved! She was doing quite well, better than she had been in over a year. Then Saturday, before Easter, she got up from one of many naps, she was 16yo after all, and she was acting funny. After a few minutes and a quick search, I realized, she had a stroke. She went downhill quickly. For the first time, she screamed out in pain! We were terrified. Eight months prior, she fell down some stairs and broke her front paw, she barely whimpered!!

I was finally able to get a hold of our vet, told her what was happening, and we met her at the office. I carried her in my lap. She was given a sedative before the other drug. She spasmed, which ripped me apart. But our vet, said, after the sedative, she couldn't detect a heartbeat, so she was already gone and the spasms were "after the fact", she wasn't "there" when it happened. I don't know if that is true, but I hope so. Laveau was gone.

When my husband I returned, we were both sad. I was still crying. La Familia (our new group) knew something was wrong. When I put them and my husband to bed for the night, Nabu, who usually gets up in bed and immediately lies down, got in bed, then immediately got down, ran around, checking the enclosed sunroom, then the two cages where Laveau used to sleep. She couldn't get in the bed anymore. Then, he stopped, looked at me, and whimpered, then climbed into bed. The others then gathered on the edge of the bed and just stared at me and laid down. They knew something was wrong; missing.

Laveau is gone, but she brought us years of happiness. She was a sweet, gentle, and calm chihuahua. Today (5/26), she would have been 17. I cried most of the day, between sad and happy. Laveau may have crossed the Rainbow Bridge, but she will always be our hearts. This is our Big Girl, the last of the NOLA Zoo Krewe, our Laveau...








Her last birthday:


They may leave us physically, but their little footprints are all over our hearts forever!