Free Republic

ROME – The Vatican’s top official for dialogue with Jews has attempted to smooth over a rift that opened last month when several prominent rabbis complained about a speech given by Pope Francis in which he said the Torah, meaning Jewish scripture and law, “does not give life.” Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch, head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, in an effort to reduce tensions, sent letters to two rabbis representing groups that had public objected to the pope’s remarks. In the letters, Koch tried to explain the theological background of the papal comments and pointed to Francis’s...

(IsraelNN.com) Portuguese cheese maker Jose Braz, one of tens of thousands of anousim ["hidden Jews"] has renewed his link to Judaism by making his unique products Portugal's first kosher cheese since 1497, when the country's Jews were expelled. Rabbi Daniel Litvak, who serves the Jewish community in the northern city of Porto, discovered that Braz was one of the Anousim after the cheese manufacturer asked him to supervise production of the special Serra da Estrala cheese and certify it as kosher. "I was surprised when he approached me, as his cheese sells very well all over the world, so it...

HOUSTON, Oct. 28 - When she was growing up in a small town in southern Colorado, an area where her ancestors settled centuries ago when it was on the fringes of the northern frontier of New Spain, Bernadette Gonzalez always thought some of the stories about her family were unusual, if not bizarre. Her grandmother, for instance, refused to travel on Saturday and would use a specific porcelain basin to drain blood out of meat before she cooked it. In one tale that particularly puzzled Ms. Gonzalez, 52, her grandfather called for a Jewish doctor to circumcise him while he...