Has Argentina Turned Against its Jews?

For twenty years, the government of Argentina has failed to bring to justice perpetrators of one of the deadliest anti-Semitic terror attacks of all time. Now, it appears that it is no longer trying.

by Eamonn MacDonagh for The Tower

On July 18, 1994, a suicide bomber drove a van packed with explosives into the headquarters of the AMIA Jewish community organization in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The resulting blast killed 85 people and left hundreds injured. It was one of the worst incidents of anti-Semitic violence since World War II. The horrific attack is believed to have been ordered by the Iranian regime and executed by its terrorist proxies, and the ongoing betrayal of justice carried out by successive Argentine leaders who have failed to have the massacre properly investigated and prosecuted bears notable marks of anti-Semitism.

The criminal investigation into the massive terrorist attack was chaotic, plagued with accusations of cover-ups, witness tampering and bribery. In a particularly sordid climax, the investigating judge, Juan José Galeano, was removed from the investigation and now faces trial on charges arising from his handling of the investigation. A group of corrupt police officers, as well as a dealer in stolen vehicles, were eventually tried on charges of playing a secondary role in the attack. In 2004, they were all acquitted.

A subsequent Supreme Court decision revoked the acquittals of the stolen car dealer and some of the corrupt policemen. A new trial was ordered. It still hasn’t happened. The same ruling found that the initial investigation into the attack, flawed though it was, produced substantial valid evidence proving the attack was an act of terrorism.

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The Sarajevo Hagaddah: Held Hostage in a Crumbling and Shuttered Museum

Priceless 14th-century manuscript from Spanish Jewry’s Golden Age survived inquisitions and the Holocaust, but now sits trapped in the shuttered Bosnian National Museum, barred from public display

BY ILAN BEN ZION for Times of Israel
SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — One of the most magnificent Jewish manuscripts, a book that survived two inquisitions and a Holocaust, is sitting trapped behind closed doors in Bosnia’s slowly crumbling National Museum, held captive by the dizzyingly convoluted politics of the Balkan nation.

The Sarajevo Haggadah, the most elaborately decorated codex remaining from Spanish Jewry’s Golden Age and today a keystone of Bosnia’s Jewish and gentile heritage, has been kept for the past two years from both the local community and tourists, despite grassroots and international efforts to put the treasure back on display.

The Bosnian government, experts say, is seemingly content to let the Haggadah continue to languish behind closed doors.

The book, which contains the story of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt — retold each year on Passover — is remarkable not only for its beautiful design, exquisite illuminated text, master-craftsmanship, and rare drawings from pre-Inquisition Spain, but also for its own remarkable exodus story.

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A Simchat Torah Story

And it was morning and it was evening, the Seventh Game.

Gary Rosenblatt, Editor and Publisher of The Jewish Week


My favorite contemporary Simchat Torah story was told to me by a close friend who grew up in Pittsburgh. I offer it here in honor of Simchat Torah, which is celebrated this year on Thursday evening and Friday, and as the baseball season closes out this weekend. Nowadays, with the expanded Major Leagues, divisional playoffs and Wild Card teams, the World Series, long known as the October Classic, could very well linger until November. But when I was growing up, the World Series invariably fell out on the High Holy Days. (I used to imagine Ford Frick, the commissioner at the time, consulting a luach, or Jewish calendar, each year to pick the Series dates just to frustrate observant fans.) But it was just such a convergence of the baseball schedule and the Jewish holidays that led to the unique encounter described here …

This is a story about the faith and joy that can bring us together (all too rarely), about the ephemeral nature of man’s yearnings and the eternity of God’s words. Mostly, though, it’s just a story that always makes me smile.

The year was 1960, when Simchat Torah — that joyous day when we complete, and begin again, the reading of the Torah — was about to start, just as the long Major League Baseball season was about to end.

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My Grandfather Collected Etrogs—To Be Passed Down to Future Generationse

More than an ephemeral part of Sukkot observance, the fruit also symbolizes the commitment of one generation to the next

By Benjamin W. Corn

On my mother’s glass-and-chrome étagère stands a sepia-toned photograph of a dapper-looking soldier, a captain in the tzar’s army. The young man, my maternal grandfather, wears his medals and other military regalia. The picture pleases the eye, startling the viewer only when background information comes to light: In addition to being a commanding officer, my grandfather was a rabbi.

I never met my grandfather, Benjamin W. Greenberg. He died several months before my birth. In compliance with Ashkenazic custom, I inherited his name. Still, having heard stories about this Renaissance man, I feel that I know him.

Like many rabbis, Grandpa amassed a vast collection of Jewish books, including rare folios and classical texts. Sixteenth-century Bibles, illuminated haggadahs, and anthologies of Yiddish poems stood among the bound volumes on shelf after shelf in his modest house, which he purchased in Brooklyn after he emigrated from Russia. Simply acquiring a treasure-trove of books, however, was too conventional to satisfy his eclectic tastes. He also cherished another object. Grandpa was an avid collector of etrogs.

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