Jewish teen among dozens of French girls joining jihad in Syria

Follow us on   By Lori Hinnant for Haaretz

AP - A French Jewish teenager is among the approximately one hundred girls and young women who have left France to join jihad in Syria during the past 18 months.

According to a security official who spoke anonymously because rules forbid him to discuss open investigations, these girls come from all walks of life. They include first- and second-generation immigrants from Muslim countries, white French backgrounds - and one Jew.

These departures are less the whims of adolescents and more the highly organized conclusions of months of legwork by networks that specifically target young people in search of an identity, according to families, lawyers and security officials. These mostly online networks recruit girls to serve as wives, babysitters and housekeepers for jihadis, with the aim of planting multi-generational roots for an Islamic caliphate.

While girls are also coming from elsewhere in Europe, including between 20 and 50 from Britain, they pose a particular dilemma for France. The country has long had a troubled relationship with its Muslim community, the largest in Europe, and investigators say its recruitment networks are well developed. A bill in France's parliament would treat those who join jihad abroad as terrorists liable to arrest upon return, despite the pleas of distraught families that their girls are kidnap victims.

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That Time I Became Too Religious For My Father

By Allison Josephs for Raising Kvell

When I first started exploring Jewish learning and observance in my late teens, all of my family and friends thought I had lost my mind. But there was one person who was especially opposed to my newfound interest–my father.

Oh, he wanted me to be Jewish all right (from the youngest age, my sisters and I understood intermarrying would leave my pork-eating parents sitting shiva for us); I just was not allowed to be too Jewish. So when I began observing Shabbos every week during my senior year of high school, replete with unscrewing the light bulb in the fridge and taping lights around the house (so I wouldn’t be left in the dark–literally), good old dad would follow my trail and screw-in and un-tape. No daughter of his would become one of them.

My father had treated “ultra” Hasidim from some of the most extreme sects when he was training to be a doctor in Manhattan and was convinced that I was on a similar path. “You’re becoming a zealot,” he would tell me over and over again, even though I was making small changes at a responsible rate and I had no intention of ever leading an extreme life.

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The Secret Jewish History of 'Gilmore Girls'

By Sigal Samuel and Anne Cohen for The Schmooze

Today is a big day. Today is the day we reconnect with Lorelai and Rory. Today is the day Netflix starts streaming all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls.

WE. JUST. CAN’T. EVEN.

The Gilmores themselves aren’t Jewish — Richard and Emily would gasp at the thought — but the show did give us such gems as the dancing rabbi, Kirk as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, and “Oy with the poodles already!” And those mandatory Friday night dinners at the parents’? Come on, they just scream Shabbat.

But more than that, there’s the theme song. Yes, that theme song.

Who knew it had a secret Jewish connection?

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The Jewish American teen who's making school buses 'green'

While still in school, Jonny Cohen started GreenShields, a project that aims to design an aerodynamic Plexiglass air shield that would cut buses' fuel use.

By Suzanne Kurtz Sloan for Haaretz

JTA - As a seventh-grader walking home in Highland Park, Ill., Jonny Cohen would watch school buses pass by and wonder if there might be a way to make them more energy efficient.

School buses are an “overlooked form of transportation,” says Jonny Cohen, now 19. “I like efficiency and for things to be efficient, and I have a passion for the environment.”

With the help of some friends and advisers at Northwestern University, he started the GreenShields Project to design an aerodynamic Plexiglass air shield for the front of the buses. The shield cuts the fuel use by buses up to 25 percent by reducing their drag.

“Taking something that already exists and modifying it just a little can make a big difference,” Cohen said. “We only have one earth and we can’t be wasteful.”

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