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הכח וינה בסיור משחקים בארצות הברית. 1926 (בית התפוצות, המרכז לתיעוד חזותי ע"ש אוסטר)

What Do You Really Know About Europe’s Jewish Football Teams?

The year was 1923, and among the main attractions for European football fans were English football leagues’ summer tours of the Continent. The gaps between the nation that invented football and its Continental neighbors were vast. The latter had yet to take its first steps in the game. No other all-star league trumped England’s until 1929, and the English leagues’ balls repeatedly landed in their opponents’ nets before wondrous eyes. West Ham United, the runner up for the cup that year, traveled to Austria on one of those tours. Winning easily elsewhere, the Austrian league surprised spectators in a 1:1[]

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Prof. Havi Dreifuss’ Lecture on the Holocaust in Soviet Russia

Sunday, March 31: Boris Maftsir’s film “The road to Babi Yar” was screened in the Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot. This is the latest film in Maftsir’s documentary serial project. Before the screening, Ms. Liora Shani, Director of Conventions & Events Center, greeted the visitors, and then historian Prof. Havi Dreifuss from the Institute for the History of Polish Jewry and Israel-Poland Relations, lectured on the Holocaust of the Jews in Soviet Russia. After the film screening, a moving discussion between the audience and the director was held. Watch Prof. Havi Drefuss’ lecture:

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Jewish Life Kept in the Attic: The Story of a Rare Photo Collection in the Holocaust

Much like other bygone vocations that did not survive the technological revolution, a photo studio is one of the institutions that have been vanishing from the public sphere. The dark room, film strips, the hard labor of photo development, the thrilling expectation to find out how the photos turned out – have been replaced by digital cameras installed in mobile phones, allowing every talent-lacking young brat to be cameraman, director, designer, developer, and distributor of photos. But this is the story of a whole different kind of photographer: Jozef Bacior, who owned a photo studio in Żarki, Poland. Bacior was[]

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The Hatfonim Are Coming: Kidnapping of Jewish Children in Tsarist Russia

Catherine the Great, the Tsarina of Russia, was known for her insatiable lust. Legend has it that in her twilight years she grew tired of her lovers and turned to four-legged animals to satisfy her sexual needs. Those legends also claim that she went to her maker in the midst of passionate relations with a horse. The legends were refuted, but no one denies that Catherine the Great urges were overwhelming. During her rule, she was obsessed not only with sex – but with conquering nations, pathological collection of art, and familial murder. Historians maintain that she was behind the[]

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חברי החוליה שנתפסה. דימשיץ ראשון משמאל בשורה העליונה (צילום מסך מאתר הסרט הדוקומנטרי "מבצע חתונה")

Slavery to Freedom with a Hijacked Plane: Refuseniks’ Operation Wedding

In Jungian terms, Israel’s sweeping victory in 1967 symbolized an archetypal revolution of the common Jew. The archetypal passive, docile, and persecuted Diaspora “galut Jew” – whom Bialik slammed in his poem “City of Slaughter” in 1903 – morphed into that of the brave, heroic, flawless “Jewish soldier” who destroyed his mortal enemy in six days of pure courage. The liberation of the Kotel provided a cathedral. It was not just the concrete liberation of the Jewish People’s holiest site – it was the spiritual and absolutely final liberation of the “galut Jew’s” flaccidity. The revolution of awareness began with[]

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Avraham Kishke or Sonia Schmalz? Food and Jewish Family Names

Gefilte fish is probably Eastern-European Jewry’s most famous dish. Other well-known Jewish delicacies include borsht, bagels and shmalz. Today, however, not many are aware that the names of these familiar foods are also Jewish surnames, as are babke, kishke, tzimes and more. There are at least a hundred Israelis with the family name Herring, and over one hundred people in the U.S. bearing the last name Schmalz. Some family names originated from Yiddish terms such as Gitflaish (“good meat”), Vaisbroyt (“white bread”) and Feferkichen (a spice cake, sometimes translated as “gingerbread”). Others, such as Weisskraut (“white cabbage”) or Sauerapfel (“sour[]

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I.D.F. General Staff Forum Visited the Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot

I.D.F. Chief of the General Staff, lieutenant general Aviv Kochavi and members of the General Staff Forum, found the time yesterday to leave their uniform at home for a few hours and enjoyed an amusing evening at Beit Hatfutsot in Tel Aviv. They were guided by Itamar Kremer, director of the Koret International School for Jewish Peoplehood, in the exhibition: Let There Be Laughter – Jewish Humor Around the World, celebrating Jewish laughter since old times until our days, with the Marx Brothers, Jerry Seinfeld, Lenny Bruce, Shaike Ofir, Sarah Silverman, Orna Banai, and so many others. The exhibition includes[]

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Alojzy Ehrlich: The Jewish Table Tennis Champion Who Survived Auschwitz

Estee Ackerman, a 17-year-old Jewish girl from New York, is one of the top table tennis players in the United States, and is setting her sites on competing in the 2020 Olympics. As a Jewish table tennis champion, Ackerman is actually following in a long tradition of Jewish success in the sport. When table tennis began to develop and grow throughout Europe, many of the sport’s earliest champions were Jews from Eastern Europe and Germany. A number of overlapping factors led to a high rate of Jewish participation and success in table tennis. As a newer sport that took off[]

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You Have Reached Your Destination: The Jewish Cartographers Without Whom We Would Not Have WAZE

In one of Louis C.K.’s classic stand-up routines, he rails at the people who complain throughout inflight service. “You’re fucking sitting in a chair in the sky,” he roars. “And you have the nerve to complain that the omelet has no mushrooms?” A recent ride with a particularly nervous cab driver reminded me of that bit. While we were talking, I realized the source of his rage: WAZE. He claimed that the navigation app frequently misled him and that his experience taught that it tended to choose obscure routes. “How grateful is this driver?” I wondered. This moment in which[]

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בחזית, משמאל: הורקהיימר, אדורנו. מאחור, בצד ימין: האברמס. היידלברג, 1964 (צילום: Jeremy J. Shapiro, Creative Commons)

Frankfurt School: The Jewish Intellectuals Who Made the 60’s

Shame. That word seems to best define what Orthodox Marxists felt after World War I. “How did the tweedy high-brow men who filled the salons of Berlin, Vienna, and London screw up our proletarian revolution?” they asked each other. Why was it a Russian nation comprised mainly of illiterate farmers that adopted the collectivist utopia – not the enlightened Germans, Austrians, English, and French? After all, the vision of our founding father Karl Marx maintained that after the profound capitalism that prevailed in early 20th century Europe, the workers of the world would unite in singing a throaty rendition of[]

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