• Future rabbi Yuri Foreman has become Israel's first boxing world champion. [via Forward]
• Hundreds of people peacefully protested outside Sen. Joe Lieberman's Stamford, Connecticut home last Sunday to show their support for universal health care. "When we heard not only would he vote against it, but he'd use his power, his position as a swing vote ... to block it from coming to a vote, we had to send a message so he knows people who vote overwhelmingly favor the public option," said Rabbi Stephen Fuchs, of Congregation Beth Israel in West Hartford. [via ConnPost]
• The White House has cut the guest list for its annual Hanukkah party and candle-lighting in half this year. Financial reasons were cited as the cause, but some rabbis think the cut might fuel "feelings in some quarters of the American Jewish community that the White House is giving them the cold shoulder." [via JPost]
• A Baptist congregation known for its anti-gay views has turned its attention to the Jewish community, protesting speeches by President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Jewish Federations of North America conference. Protesters carried signs that read "God Hates Jews" (among other things) and warned passersby that Jews would soon be in hell. [via USA Today]
• This November Costco plans to begin selling "The Illustrated Torah" at stores near significant Jewish populations. [via Forward]
• Apparently some folks are trying to turn dreidel spinning into a major league sport. [via Tablet]

Photo via Getty Images / Al Bello

A Polish historian named Piotr Buzek is using Facebook to increase Holocaust awareness. Buzek works for the Brama Grodzka Cultural Center in Lublin and created a profile for Henio Zytomirski, a young boy who died in a concentration camp. "Here at the center we have collected a lot of information about Henio's life, said Buzek, "and then I tried to imagine how this young boy experienced the world around him."

The resulting Facebook profile, which Buzek updates as if he were Henio, has touched the hearts of many and Henio's virtual self already has over 1,700 friends. "My name is Henio Zytomirski. I am seven-years-old. I live on 3 Szewska Street in Lublin," reads his profile information. A September 29, 2009 wall post reads:

"Winter has arrived. Every Jew must wear the Star of David with his last name. A lot has changed. German troops walk the streets. Mama says that I shouldn't be frightened, and always that everything is just fine. Always?"

An October 5, 2009 post later reads: "Grandpa says that the war will soon be over. He says that soldiers also have families. How is that possible? They have a family, but they kill families."

The Facebook page is a new way for people to learn about the Holocaust, making Henio more than just a name or a photograph. Commenters responding to his posts are simultaneously responding to Henio's experiences and coming to terms with the reality of the Holocaust.

"We wanted to use this new technology to help meet the goal of our center: to keep the memory of Jews in Lublin alive. We wanted an innovative way to share history. And with Henio's story, we wanted to reach out to a new audience," said Buzek.

[via Tablet]

Letters to a Dead Jewish Child [Ha'aretz]
Young Holocaust victim has over 1,700 friends on Facebook [Deutsche-Welle]

An Israeli woman was arrested for wearing a prayer shawl while worshiping at the Kotel. Nofrat Frenkel, a 4th year medical student at Ben Gurion University, was attending a prayer service with other members of Women of the Wall, a woman-led group that advocates for gender equality. On this particular morning the group had gathered to celebrate Rosh Chodesh Kislev and a new Sefer Torah donated to them by Temple Sinai, a Reform congregation in Pittsburgh. After singing Hallel the group of more then 40 women - sixteen of whom were wearing prayer shawls - decided to unveil the Torah. Soon afterward Frenkel, who was holding the Torah, was arrested by the police, who "threatened that she might not get a medical license because [now] she would have a felony on her record." Eventually she was released but is banned from visiting the wall for 15 days.

The arrest is the latest development in a disagreement between Women of the Wall and Orthodox rabbis who have called the women "deviants who serve equality." Although WoW has been holding prayer services at the Kotel to commemorate Rosh Hodesh for the past 21 years, as women they are not allowed to wear prayer shawls or read from the Torah. According to Ha'aretz, people are noticing the increasingly fundamentalist practices being enforced at the Kotel, with the end result being that many visitors leave the wall with negative memories of one of Judaism's most important sites.

Gawker posted an interesting YouTube video about Women of the Wall, which recounts how female worshipers have had chairs and feces thrown at them while praying. The video can be seen here. "Israel markets the wall as a place of national unity," says Anat Hoffman, founder of WoW, in the video. "How can there be unity when half the population is silenced?"

Image via Women of the Wall / Photo by Rahel Jaskow

Fredric Aranda has photographed the likes of HRH Prince Philip and Bill Clinton, but his most recent exhibition breaks away from GQ and Vanity Fair, where his photos so often appear. Titled "Kosherface," the collection of unexpected images focuses on Lubavitcher Jews and gives people a glimpse into the often insular world of Lubavitcher communities. The exhibition opens today at at Theprintspace Gallery in London and will run through Dec. 2nd.

Aranda began taking pictures of Hasidim while he was a student at Oxford and ended up living in the home of a Lubavitcher rabbi. He began taking photos of the rabbi's family, then of family friends, and before he knew it he had photographed some 3,000 rabbis. These images are the foundation of "Kosherface" and you can see some of them on Tablet's website. They include silohuettes, a bride covered for her bedeken ceremony, even a rabbi rowing a boat. The image shown here, of a young hasidic man whose face has been splattered in paint, is from the exhibition announcement on Aranda's website. Of the images that make use of splatter paint, Aranda says: "I always thought it would be fun to experiment with color on what is very monochromatic clothing for the men. It's refreshing to see the hasidic in the context of fashion and beauty photography. I don't want this to be a show just for Jews."