United States

The first time Holocaust survivor Fanya Gottesfeld Heller told her story at Pacific High School, an alternative public school in downtown Brooklyn, she jumped every time a school bell sounded. The students, mostly black and Latino, all from low-income and troubled homes, noticed.

And all understood. Some 70 years after she came under Nazi rule as a young teen in her native Ukraine, and some 50 years after she immigrated to the United States, part of her is still that frightened adolescent.

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The founder of the "birther movement" sought Republican Jewish support for her candidacy for California secretary of state.

Orly Taitz attended the Republican Jewish Coalition's California division's annual "summer bash" last weekend.

Taitz has earned notoriety for heading the movement based on the false assertion that President Obama was not born in the United States. She has been censured in court while representing troops who refuse to take orders from the "de facto" president, as she calls Obama.

While the official beginning of summer may still be a few weeks away, summertime heat and humidity have already arrived here. For many wine drinkers hot weather calls only for white wine, and indeed no red wine can be as refreshing on a hot and humid day as a crisp, cool, white. Yet so many favorite summertime foods — cold-cuts, hotdogs and hamburgers — simply scream out for soft, easy drinking, medium-bodied, red wines. These days, one of my favorite summer reds is Rioja.

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Helen Thomas quit her job with Hearst in the wake of mounting outrage over her assertion that Israeli Jews should "return" to Poland, Germany and the United States.

"Helen Thomas announced Monday that she is retiring, effective immediately," said a statement issued Monday by the Hearst Corp. "Her decision came after her controversial comments about Israel and the Palestinians were captured on videotape and widely disseminated on the Internet."