Jews

Pope Francis will head to the Middle East this week to preach peace and has asked two friends from Argentina to accompany him, Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Islamic studies professor Omar Abboud.

Jews have lived in Greece since the time of Alexander the Great; the overwhelming majority of the community died during the Nazi occupation. Now, 70 years later, the community — and Greece — is confronting the rise of the Golden Dawn Party, a group that espouses neo-Nazi ideology.

After nearly 30 years, the program that brought thousands of Jews from Ethiopia to Israel has come to an end.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men are exempt from military service in Israel, but a proposed law would change that. It would be a major social shift that is part of the larger question concerning the role of the ultra-Orthodox in Israeli society.

The An-sky Yiddish Heritage Ensemble, a musical quartet, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the historic An-sky expeditions by playing rare Yiddish folk songs.

The council of rabbis that regulates everything connected with Jewish religious law in Israel now wants to change the shape of bourekas, a type of stuffed pastry popular among Israelis. The move is aimed at helping people keep kosher. But if the rabbis succeed, says one cafe owner, "there really is no limit to their power."

A new exhibit in Berlin's Jewish Museum is intentionally provocative. The point, one curator says, is to "get people talking about how they perceive Jews, particularly in Germany today." At the center of the controversy is a display in which a Jewish person sits inside a glass showcase and answers questions from visitors.

Smoked salmon pastrami may sound heretical, but owners of a revisionist Jewish deli in Washington, D.C., say it's all part of a revival of traditional Jewish cuisine.

The Jews of Ribadavia, a small medieval town in the north of Spain, are long gone. But no matter: The town's plan to host its first Passover Seder in centuries is aimed at tourists. Like many cities across Spain, Ribadavia hopes reclaiming its Jewish history will also boost its economy.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt said little and did less on behalf of Jews trying to get out of Nazi Germany; but he also won Jewish votes by landslide margins and led the Allies to victory in World War II. A new history by Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman revises FDR's performance upward.