BRIEFS KOSHER CERTIFICATION AGENCY SUES JETBLUE, SAYING THEY LIED ABOUT A KOSHER SNACK One of the United States’ largest kosher certifying agencies alleges that JetBlue airlines sold a snack it falsely claimed was certified as kosher. In a lawsuit filed last month, Kof-K said JetBlue put the agency’s hechsher, or rabbinical approval symbol, on an artichoke snack that the agency never certified as kosher. The company that makes the artichoke snack, Elma Farms, was not named in the lawsuit. A JetBlue spokesperson told Reuters the airline is investigating the claims. An attorney for Kof-K declined to comment to Reuters. There are approximately 1,400 kosher certifying agencies around the world, but in the United States, the “Big Five”— the Orthodox Union (OU), Organized Kashrut Laboratories (OK), Kof-K, StarK, and the Chicago Rabbinical Council (CRC)—certify more than 80% of the country’s kosher food products. Kof-K started certifying food as kosher in the early 1970s. JetBlue’s $9 Mediterranean-inspired vegan snack box also included products certified kosher by the Orthodox Union, the Kashruth Council of Canada, and EarthKosher. This is not the first legal action taken against an airline relating to their provision of kosher food this year. In Brazil, a judge awarded plaintiffs $1,759 after they filed a complaint against American Airlines alleging that they were denied kosher food on board. (JTA) TOP AP BRASS ATTEND REOPENING OF GAZA BUREAU THAT WAS IN BUILDING BOMBED BY ISRAEL Top executives from the Associated Press launched the news agency’s new office in the Gaza Strip more than a year after Israel gave AP staff an hour’s notice to leave before bombing the building it said also housed a Hamas intelligence unit. The importance the agency attached to reopening the bureau was signaled by the presence of Daisy Veerasingham, the AP president, and executive editor Julie Pace, at the dedication of the new office
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on Tuesday, July 5. Israel is already under intense scrutiny for how it handles the international media following the shooting death in May of a popular Palestinian American journalist. “AP’s resilient Gaza team has never wavered, even in the moments our bureau collapsed and in the weeks that followed,” Veerasingham said in a release. “The Associated Press has operated in Gaza for more than half a century and remains committed to telling the story of Gaza and its people.” The reopening comes after multiple news outlets, including the Associated Press, published analyses blaming Israeli troops for the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot while covering an Israeli raid in Jenin. The State Department said Israeli troops were the likely shooters, but also said the killing was unintentional. Last year during the Israel-Gaza conflict, Israel bombed a 12-story building in Gaza City known as a center for journalists covering the region, including some working for the AP and Al Jazeera. IDF officials warned journalists to leave the building an hour before the attack. Israeli officials said that Hamas was operating out of the tower. AP said Israel never provided evidence of Hamas’ presence in the building. (JTA)
GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF HOST DISCOVERS FAMILY MEMBER LIVED WITH ANNE FRANK’S FAMILY The Jewish comic actor and Great British Bake Off host Matt Lucas came across a very familiar name while researching his family’s history on BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?—that of Otto Frank. In an episode of the celebrity genealogy show that aired June 16, Lucas learned that Werner Goldschmidt, his grandmother’s first cousin, had rented a room from the Franks while they were still living in their Amsterdam apartment. Goldschmidt was still living with them when they went into hiding in 1942 and was mentioned in Anne Frank’s diary. In a clip from the episode on YouTube, Lucas reads a diary entry Frank had written on July 8, 1942, which describes Goldschmidt as a recent divorcee who was
hanging around in the house too long that night, despite the family’s polite hints for him to get on with his evening. “I would have read this diary when I was younger and never realized that she was talking about a relative of mine,” said Lucas, who was only vaguely aware that some of his family members had died in concentration camps. Lucas, who has also appeared in other shows like Doctor Who and movies like Paddington, was raised in a Reform synagogue in London, though his parents came from traditional Orthodox families. He expands on his Jewish identity in his memoir, Little Me: My life from A-Z, which has a chapter “J,” for Jewish.. (JTA)
HISTORIC WELSH SYNAGOGUE GETS OVER $600,000 TO REOPEN AS CULTURAL CENTER The Welsh and British governments are giving a Jewish heritage organization over $600,000 to open a Jewish cultural center at a historic former Welsh synagogue. The Foundation for Jewish Heritage, a British group that researches, advocates and restores Jewish heritage sites across Europe, announced that it will receive the funds from the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), which is administered by the British government, and the Welsh government’s Transforming Towns program to begin a development phase. The Foundation bought the Merthyr Tydfil synagogue building in 2019 with the plans of creating the first museum devoted to the history of Jews in Wales. The synagogue was opened in 1877, when an influx of Central and Eastern European Jewish immigrants to South Wales necessitated a second synagogue in the area. However, as the local industrial economy declined into the latter part of the 20th century, so did the local Jewish population. With no one to fill it, the synagogue was officially sold in 1983. It had various purposes over the years, but was classified as so deteriorated in 2006 that it has been out of use ever since. Dame Helen Hyde, chair of the Foundation for Jewish Heritage, said that the new center will “tell the remarkable story of the Welsh Jewish community
while also tackling important issues within our society of today.” The 2011 national census, the last official estimate of the Jewish population of Wales, reported 2,064 people. Today the number is believed to be in the hundreds. The closest active synagogue to Merthyr Tydfil is in Cardiff. (JTA)
UKRAINE WILL NOT ALLOW IN UMAN PILGRIMS More than four months into its devastating war against Russia, Ukraine is sending a new message to the world’s Jews: Don’t come here for Rosh Hashanah. Tens of thousands of Jews flood into Uman, a central city that is home to the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, a 18th-century Jewish luminary, annually for the Jewish new year. Even in the first year of the pandemic, when global travel ground to a halt and the gathering was officially banned, Jewish pilgrims sought to make their way to Uman. This year, their security cannot be guaranteed, Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, said in a statement posted on the embassy’s Facebook page. “Due to concerns for the lives and well-being of the visitors to Ukraine and in light of the blatant Russian war in our country, despite all efforts, we can not guarantee the security of pilgrims and do not currently allow tourists and visitors to enter Ukraine,” Korniychuk wrote. The statement did not say whether it constitutes an official ban on traffic into Ukraine, which receives thousands of arrivals daily through its land borders with Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Moldova. Israelis and Jews from the around the world have been among those entering the country to provide aid and respite to war refugees, who are now estimated to number more than six million just within Ukraine’s borders. Korniychuk exhorted would-be pilgrims to pray for the end of the war, which began on Feb. 24. “We hope that the prayers will be fulfilled, and that Ukraine will once again be a country that generously receives visitors from Israel, and especially Jews who come to Ukraine to visit the graves of the righteous.” (JTA)
