“I feel my friend’s pain and my pain. I don’t feel anything else.” These are the words of 12 year Yemeni boy Khaled, one of the few survivors of the Aug. 9 bombing of a school bus taking school children to a picnic. Yemen is one of the most dangerous places in the world to…
By now, most Americans have heard about the massacre of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh this past Saturday. Jewish World Watch (JWW) was created to monitor and call attention to mass atrocities and genocides worldwide. When most of our work is focused on countries in the Global South or areas…
We are all connected, and our hearts are broken. As the tragic news poured out of Pittsburgh on Saturday morning, many Jews in Los Angeles spoke of their own close ties to the Tree of Life Synagogue, where 11 people were murdered during a Shabbat morning service by a gunman spewing anti-Semitic hatred. We see…
Sermon by Rabbi David Wolpe: “Even a hunter cannot kill a bird that flies to him for refuge.” This Samurai maxim inspired one gifted and courageous man to save thousands of people in defiance of his government and at the cost of his career. On Friday I came to Nagoya at the invitation of the Japanese government…
To be a Jew is to wonder where God is when bad things happen to good people, and, where God was when bad things happened to our people – like the Holocaust, and the Inquisition and the pogroms, and the recent death of Lisa, a 51 year old congregant, mother of 4 … and the…
Lech Lecha is the story of the start of the Jewish people. In this parasha, God tells Avram, or as we will come to know him, Abraham, to leave his home and go to the land that God will show to him. This land is, of course, Canaan, which we know today as Israel. God…
Jewish World Watch has collected sermon excerpts from rabbis throughout Los Angeles in honor of National Refugee Shabbat. We also received a wonderful excerpt from a Bar Mitzvah speech. “The Japanese Man Who Saved 6,000 Jews With His Handwriting” by Rabbi David Wolpe “Even a hunter cannot kill a bird that flies to him for…
South Sudan is the world’s youngest country, made up of 10 states, and home to over 60 different major ethnic groups. Salva Kiir Mayardit became president of South Sudan—then still part of Sudan—and head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in 2005, succeeding long-time rebel leader John Garang, who died in a helicopter crash. …
Last week, Jewish World Watch (JWW) co-sponsored a conference at Loyola Law School called “New Challenges to Justice: Genocide in the 21st Century.” The event began with a screening on Thursday evening of “Amae, Thamee, Ama (Mother, Daughter, Sister),” a documentary by Jeanne Hallecy about the Burmese military’s practice of using rape as a weapon…
Sometimes it seems as though the world has almost given up on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). After decades of conflict, many in the international community looked at the resource-rich nation as a lost cause. The large proxy war, known as Africa’s first world war, may have subsided, but violence flares up regularly…