יום ראשון, כ״ו אב תשפ״וSunday, August 9, 2026
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By JTA
President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security in his condolence message on the death of Ariel Sharon. “On behalf of the American people, Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to the family of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and to the people of Israel on the loss of a leader who dedicated […]
By JTA
President Obama nominated Stanley Fischer, the former governor of the Bank of Israel, to be the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Friday nomination comes the same week that the Senate confirmed Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve’s chairwoman, the third Jewish person to hold the post in succession, following Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan. […]
By JTA
Supporters of the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne hijacked three French pro-Israel websites in a coordinated cyber attack. The attack Thursday paralyzed the websites Israel-Flash.com, Europe-Israel.org and liguedefensejuive.com, the website of the French Jewish Defense League, and replaced their content with messages of support for Dieudonne, Le Nouvel Observateur reported. On the hijacked websites, the hackers called […]
By JTA
Amiri Baraka, the New Jersey poet laureate whose works were celebrated by blacks but often condemned by Jews, has died. Baraka’s writings, lectures and poetry brought him national renown beginning in the 1960s, and the one-time black nationalist was celebrated by many African Americans as a voice of the disenfranchised. He was a winner of […]
By JTA
The president of Hungary’s Jewish umbrella group criticized a planned monument to victims of the Germany occupation for ignoring Hungary’s complicity in the Holocaust. The memorial announced Thursday would be built in Budapest’s Freedom Square and pay tribute to “all Hungarian victims with the erection of the monument commemorating the tragic German occupation and the […]
By JTA
For the second time in less than a month, Israel demanded clarifications from the Netherlands on Dutch firms’ divestment from Israel. On Friday, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Dutch ambassador to Israel, Caspar Veldkamp, to provide clarifications on the decision of PGGM, a large pensions administrator, to divest from five Israeli banks because […]
By JTA
This discovery was first announced in JewishPress.com in April 2013. The longest water tunnel ever discovered in Israel is being excavated in Jerusalem, near the train station in the southern part of the city. Both the tunnel and a stone column head at its opening, belonging to a state structure dating back to the kings […]
By JTA
Prison authorities in Russia released a Jewish schoolteacher whose controversial bribery conviction triggered protests by leading politicians. The teacher, Ilya Farber, was released Friday from the Tver correctional prison after serving three years of a 7-year sentence for accepting $13,000 in bribes. “The campaign to resolve the issue of [political] prisoners just got another devoted […]
By JTA
Israel published tenders for 600 new homes in East Jerusalem and 801 in Judea and Samaria settlements. Government officials delayed the announcement until U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had ended his latest peace-brokering tour in the region, Army Radio reported. European leaders and the United States had urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not […]
By JTA
A court in France scrapped a municipal ban on a performance by the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala Thursday after he petitioned to negate the ruling by a court in Nantes. The judge rejected the argument made by Christian de Lavernée, a municipal administrator, who banned the show on grounds that it would create a […]
By JTA
A Chinese businessman who is determined to buy an American newspaper said he is just as smart as the Jews who own some of those newspapers. Chen Guangbiao, chairman of Jiangsu Huangpu Recycling Resources, who made his fortune in recycling construction materials in China, announced late last month that he would travel to New York […]
By JTA
The family of murdered Brooklyn landlord Menachem Stark has contributed $50,000 to what is now a total reward to $72,000 for information leading to the killer of the Satmar Hasidic real estate developer. The New York Police offered $20,000 and the NYPD Crime Stoppers program pitched in with $2,000. “We have increased the reward in […]
By JTA
The famous Girl Guides cookies now have the OU approval as being kosher thanks to an all-Orthodox troop in Canada, but their chocolate mint cookies still are on the forbidden list. All Girl Scout cookies in the United States have been kosher for at least 20 years, said organization spokesman Stewart Goodbody. When the 31 […]
By JTA
Two former employees of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty were charged Tuesday in the multimillion-dollar scam at the New York charity. Former Executive Director David Cohen and Chief Financial Officer Herbert Friedman were arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on grand larceny, money laundering and conspiracy charges. They pleaded not guilty. According to the felony […]
By JTA
A Dutch pension administrator has divested from five Israeli banks over their activity in the Judea and Samaria as a matter of “responsible investment policy” but it retains its investments in Chinese banks operating in Tibet on land widely seen internationally as land occupied by China. The pension investment company PGGM announced its decision to […]
By JTA
French interior Minister Manuel Valls instructed French mayors to ban performances by the antisemitic comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala. Valls sent the non-binding recommendation in a circular to French municipalities on Monday, days before Dieudonne is scheduled to launch a nationwide tour, the French news agency AFP reported. “I have sent an instruction today to all […]
By JTA
Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, was elected president of the Association for Jewish Studies at its annual meeting. Sarna is the fourth Brandeis professor to serve in the role — one was his father, Nahum Sarna. “This is a great honor to be a leading an organization that plays […]
By JTA
Israel published plans to build nearly 300 Judea and Samaria apartments as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wrapped up a visit to the Middle East without an official framework agreement between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. Kerry left Israel for the United States on Monday after pressing U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations for several days. The […]
By JTA
Stark was remembered by friends and relatives as a “go-to guy.”
By JTA
Aaron Liberman of Northwestern checked in for the final minute of action against Michigan in the Wildcats’ 74-51 men’s basketball loss in Ann Arbor on Sunday and.in the process, the red-shirt freshman made history twice: According to the Big Ten News Network, Liberman was the first player to wear a yarmulke in Big Ten Conference […]
By JTA
New Year’s revelers shot fireworks and urinated in Germany’s Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Reacting to a disgusting and shocking video that also explicitly showed a man urinating amid young party-goers celebrating among the 2711 stone slabs at the memorial last week, spokesperson Jenifer Stolz told JTA that “we are all quite appalled. But it is […]
By JTA
A Dutch soccer team is facing criticism for playing in Abu Dhabi after agreeing to the emirate’s demand not to let in the team’s Israeli defender. Two Dutch politicians and several media criticized the soccer team Vitesse from Arnhem over the weekend for agreeing to play in Abu Dhabi despite the refusal Saturday to let […]
By JTA
U.S. Secretary of State Kohn Kerry reportedly will remain in Israel in order to hold additional talks leading to an Israeli –Palestinian peace treaty. Kerry, who arrived in Israel on Thursday, flew to Saudi Arabia on Sunday morning in order to report to Arab leaders on the negotiations. He told reporters in Israel as he […]
By JTA
Israel denied a claim by one of its former ambassadors to Argentina that Israel has killed most of the people responsible for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community building in Buenos Aires. “The vast majority of the guilty parties are in another world, and this is something we did,” Yitzhak Aviran said in an […]
By JTA
Pope Francis will visit Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority in May. The pontiff made the formal announcement of his long-anticipated trip from his Vatican window before a crowd who had gathered in St. Peter’s Square on a rainy Sunday. “In the climate of joy, typical of this Christmas season, I wish to announce that […]
By JTA
French comedian Diedonne M’bala M’bala complained to police about threats to blow up the theater in which he performs. The bomb threat was made Thursday against the Main D’Or theater, which Dieudonne operates, in Paris’ 11th arrondissement, according to MetroNews.fr. Police rushed to the scene but found no explosives. Performances by Dieudonne, a professed anti-Semite […]
By JTA
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife are responsible for the largest on-record charitable donation in the United States in 2013. For the second straight year, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, gave away 18 million Facebook shares — a gift worth more than $970 million — to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in December, […]
By JTA
Jennifer Gorovitz resigned as CEO of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco. Gorovitz, the first woman to lead a major American Jewish federation, will step down from her post on March 31, according to a Friday news release. In a letter dated Jan. 3, Gorovitz said that after 10 “phenomenal” years with the federation, […]
By JTA
The family of captive U.S. government contractor Warren Weinstein called for ”date-specific confirmation” that he is still alive. In a statement released Thursday, the Weinstein family said a video distributed last week by al-Qaida in Pakistan does not prove that Weinstein is alive because there is no indication of when it was made. Weinstein, 72, […]
By JTA
French police are searching for an unidentified man who performed an anti-Semitic gesture at three locales connected to the murder of Jews. A photo of the suspect surfaced last week online in which he performed the quenelle, a quasi-Nazi salute, in front of the Toulouse school where the Muslim extremist Mohammed Merah murdered four Jews […]
By JTA
Israel is the sixth favorite country of American citizens and Saudi Arabia is their least favorite among allies, according to a Pew Research Center survey carried out in November and released this week. The Jewish state was viewed favorably by 61 percent of Americans and was sixth behind Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, and […]
By JTA
Israeli government money was transferred for the first time to the Reform Movement in Israel to pay the salaries of four community Reform rabbis. The transfer of the more than $86,000 on Wednesday comes 18 months after Israel’s Supreme Court approved an arrangement to enable non-Orthodox spiritual leaders who lead congregations to receive state salaries […]
By JTA
Two artworks hanging in Germany’s parliament building in Berlin may have been confiscated or acquired at artificially depressed prices by the Nazis from the original owners, German newspapers reported. The Die Welt newspaper suggested that one of the works coincidentally stems from a gallery owned by an uncle of Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazi-era dealer whose […]
By JTA
National Basketball Association star Tony Parker has apologized for performing an anti-Semitic salute after a three-year-old photo was published in the French media. The photo shows Parker, who was born in Belgium and is French by nationality, performing the quenelle salute earlier this year standing next to the gesture’s founder, anti-Semitic French comedian Dieudonne Mlaba […]
By JTA
At least 55 American universities and colleges have rejected the American Studies Association membership vote in favor of an academic boycott of Israel. The number was tracked by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “This remarkable response is a clear declaration that American academia will not be party to the efforts to […]
By JTA
More than 1,600 alumni and students of Brandeis University and others with ties to the institution have signed an online petition protesting pay to former university president Jehuda Reinharz. Reinharz reportedly receives more than $600,000 a year in retirement pay and at least $800,000 a year from the Mandel Foundation, which he serves as president. […]
By JTA
A New Jersey man said he was fired after refusing to fire a man his boss called a “no-good New York city Jew.” Thomas Greco, a Middleton, New Jersey father of five, said after he was hired in May 2011 as a superintendent at the U.S. Custom House in Lower Manhattan, his boss, Howard Anastasi, […]
By JTA
Amid a public debate in France over an allegedly anti-Semitic gesture, French media have reproduced a photo of a man performing it outside the Toulouse school where four Jews were murdered. The photo, which was published Monday on the website of the France 3 broadcaster, shows a man wearing a shirt featuring a portrait of […]
By JTA
A star athlete from France is facing disciplinary action for showing support for an antisemitic comedian whose shows may soon be banned by the French government. Britain’s Football Association said Saturday it was considering punishing Nicolas Anelka, a French national playing for the West Bromwich Albion soccer team, for performing, during a match, the quenelle […]
By JTA
Lithuania’s prime minister condemned a lawmaker for suggesting Jews are cheap and “are just looking to take from Lithuania.” “I judge this statement to be very negative and it doesn’t represent the party’s position,” Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius said Dec. 23, according to the news site Delfi.lt. A spokesperson for Butkevicius’ Social Democratic Party of […]
By JTA
Plumbers fixing a water leak in central Portugal discovered what appears to be a cluster of 600-year-old Jewish ritual baths. The discovery was made earlier this year in the city of Coimbra as the plumbers were replacing the piping of an old building in what used to be the Jewish part of the Old City, […]
By JTA
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged the Obama Administration to block a new Israeli plan to build hundreds of additional homes in Jewish settlements. Israel officials have said the planned construction of new units in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem will be announced next week, just as Israel is set to release 26 long-serving Palestinian prisoners […]
By JTA
The New York Times is conducting a survey of Hungarian Jews to help deepen its coverage of anti-Semitism in that country. The survey, published online Tuesday, asks respondents whether they experienced anti-Semitism and considered emigrating as a result, among other questions. “An openly anti-Semitic political party has gained power in Hungary’s Parliament in recent years, […]
By JTA
A new non-denominational Jewish burial society has replaced an Orthodox one at a Boston-area Jewish funeral home. Community Hevra Kadisha of Greater Boston, which launched this fall and is part of a growing movement of Jewish burial societies that include non-Orthodox volunteers, began performing tahara – the ritual preparation of bodies for burial – at […]
By JTA
An American Jewish government contractor kidnapped by Al Qaeda in Pakistan again has asked the Obama administration to negotiate with his captors. Al Qaeda released a video message from Warren Weinstein, a former Peace Corps and USAID official, late Wednesday night in which he says he feels “totally abandoned and forgotten,” according to the Washington […]
By JTA
The nephew of Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy was arrested for trespassing in a yeshiva high school in Stamford in an apparently drunken condition. Kerry Mallory, an actor who appears in the new movie “The Wolf of Wall Street,” was arrested Monday on the property of Yeshiva Bais Binyomin, along with his girlfriend Courtney Wilson. Both […]
By JTA
The IDF is returning an Iron Dome anti-missile system to the Sderot, located less than a mile from northern Gaza, in wake of the escalation of terrorist attacks from Gaza. Terrorists on Tuesday killed an Israeli citizen working for the army at the Gaza security fence, and the IDF retaliated with strikes on terror targets. […]
By JTA
“Please, everyone, join me, in a clear demand to our friends, the Americans."
By JTA
They beat a man suspected of performing the "quenelle" and locked him inside the trunk of a parked car.
By JTA
Two more American institutions of higher learning officially withdrew their memberships from the American Studies Association after its membership voted in favor of an academic boycott of Israel. Kenyon College and Indiana University on Monday joined Brandeis University and Penn State Harrisburg in canceling their memberships in the association. Dozens of other universities also have […]
By JTA
Ephraim Mirvis became the first sitting British chief rabbi to address the annual Limmud conference, defying the opposition of prominent haredi Orthodox rabbis in England. Mirvis, who received a standing ovation Monday upon entering the packed auditorium at the University of Warwick, did not directly address the controversy in his session on this week’s Torah […]
By JTA
Rapper Kanye West told a Chicago radio station that he wants to take back the “ignorant compliment” he made about Jews last month during an interview on the New York City radio station WWPR-FM. West said, “Black people don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people.” In an interview last week with the […]
By JTA
Pollack is basketball’s ultimate numbers and public relations man.
By JTA
The northern Greek city of Thessaloniki will build a Holocaust research center at the site where some 50,000 of the city’s Jews were deported to Nazi death camps. “This is the fulfilment of a historic responsibility for Thessaloniki,” city Mayor Yiannis Boutaris told reporters. The agreement to establish the Memorial Center on Holocaust Education Remembrance […]
By JTA
Unidentified Russian vandals used a pig’s head to desecrate a synagogue in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar, according to representatives of the Jewish community of the city, located 600 miles west of Baku, Azerbaijan. They found the pig’s head at the entrance to their synagogue and believe the perpetrators are also responsible for English-language […]
By JTA
The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty will be able to continue receiving New York State funds in the wake of the scandal that has seen its former CEO charged with stealing millions from the charity. The New York State attorney general and comptroller announced Thursday that they had reached an agreement with the Met Council, […]
By JTA
Encouraged by Israeli diplomats, parliamentarians from the Council of Europe have submitted a motion opposing an earlier resolution condemning ritual circumcision of boys. The motion was submitted last week by 101 members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the council, according to Micaela Catalano, a spokeswoman for the assembly, which has 318 parliamentarians and whose resolutions […]
By JTA
Canada has called for the removal of a top U.N. official who accused Israel of having “genocidal intentions” against Palestinians. Ottawa “completely rejects and condemns” the “appalling” remarks made by Richard Falk, U.N. Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird said in a statement. Canada has previously called for Falk to […]
By JTA
He died peacefully in his home in New York, surrounded by family.
By JTA
A source close to Aharon Friedman, the estranged husband of Tamar Epstein, is denying a report that he has granted his wife a religious writ of divorce, or get. This week, the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot, or ORA, issued a flyer and fundraising call announcing that “Tamar is Free,” leading to an erroneous […]
By JTA
A Russian court ordered the early release of a Jewish teacher whose bribery trial was marred by anti-Semitic statements and whose lengthy prison sentence was criticized by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Tver Regional Court last week reduced Ilya Farber’s sentence from seven years to three for accepting bribes and abusing his position while working […]
By JTA
Nelson Mandela received training from Israel’s Mossad in the 1960s, an Israeli government document has revealed. Mandela, the former South African president and anti-apartheid leader who died earlier this month, was trained by Mossad agents in weaponry and sabotage in 1962, according to a report Thursday in Haaretz that was based on a document in […]
By JTA
Canada has called for the removal of a top U.N. official who accused Israel of having “genocidal intentions” against Palestinians. Ottawa “completely rejects and condemns” the “appalling” remarks made by Richard Falk, U.N. Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird said in a statement. Canada has previously called for Falk to […]
By JTA
An Israeli-American man caught in a sting operation trying to sell weapons to Taliban terrorists was sentenced on Wednesday to 25 years in prison. Oded Orbach, 55, of Highland Park, Ill., was convicted in April of conspiring to provide material support to the Taliban and conspiring to acquire anti-aircraft missiles. A U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency […]
By JTA
A county in Sweden is moving ahead with plans to ban the non-medical circumcision of boys, its leading elected official said. Per-Ola Mattsson, the commissioner of Blekinge County, said he will up bring up a ban on the practice with the county’s health board in February, according to a Swedish publication. Mattsson, who is also […]
By JTA
British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has called on Orthodox synagogues to ban “partnership” minyan services, where women can lead prayers and read from the Torah. “I know that you are working with our communities to find ways, within the boundaries of halacha, to make prayer, learning, leadership and involvement more meaningful for men and women […]
By JTA
Monaco Royal Charlotte Casiraghi and the French Jewish comedian Gad Elmaleh embraced their first son. The baby, Raphael, was born Tuesday at Princess Grace Hospital Center in Monaco, the AFP news agency reported. “Charlotte Casiraghi and Gad Elmaleh are delighted to announce the birth of their son, Raphael, born in Monaco,” said a statement from the […]
By JTA
A Native American studies association is the third U.S. academic body this year to recommend its members boycott Israeli universities. The Native American and Indigenous Studies Association in a Dec. 15 announcement said it “encourages NAISA members to boycott Israeli academic institutions because they are imbricated with the Israeli state and we wish to place […]
By JTA
A mother in Israel has appealed to the country’s Supreme Court a rabbinical court ruling requiring her to circumcise her son. In her appeal filed Wednesday, the mother said the rabbis cannot order her to circumcise her son, who is now a year old. The Jerusalem rabbinical court last month upheld the ruling of the […]
By JTA
The Russian city of Rostov-on-Don has agreed to acknowledge the Jewish identity of Holocaust victims killed there by the Nazis. The municipality’s Memorial Council last week announced its decision to revise a memorial plaque at the Zmievskaya Balka mass grave to mention the Jewish identity of the majority of the approximately 27,000 bodies buried there […]
By JTA
The Haredi Gat Brothers, Aryeh and Gil, have become the first act named to the semi-finals of the popular new Israeli talent show “Rising Star.” The show, which allows Israeli viewers to vote in real time for their favorite performers using an app on their mobile phones, is designed to uncover the next hot Israeli […]
By JTA
Damaged Torah scrolls found by U.S. troops in Iraq’s intelligence headquarters were buried in a cemetery in New York on Sunday, according to Jewish law for disposing of unusable religious objects and texts. More than 100 people, including Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., attended the ceremony at the New Montefiore Cemetery in […]
By JTA
Jacob Ostreicher, a New York businessman held in Bolivia since 2011, is back in the United States. Two Jewish news websites, JP Updates and Algemeiner, reported Monday that Ostreicher returned Sunday to New York, although the circumstances of his departure from Bolivia are not clear. Ostreicher, who had a flooring business in New York, invested […]
By JTA
Alan Dershowitz, one of the country’s most prominent lawyers and a passionate advocate for Israel, is retiring from Harvard Law School at the age of 75. Known for taking on high-profile and often unpopular causes and clients, Dershowitz taught at Harvard Law for half a century. His retirement becomes official at the end of the […]
By JTA
Intense fighting amid a coup attempt in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, has forced the Israeli aid group IsraAid to suspend its operations in the country and go on lockdown. The heavy gunfire in Juba began late Sunday night, and IsraAid members reported artillery and automatic weapons fire in their vicinity. Salva Kiir, the […]
By JTA
A one-third turnout of American Studies Association (ASA) members have voted to endorse its national council’s call for a boycott of Israeli universities, the ASA announced Monday, a day after the deadline for voting. There were 3,853 eligible voters, but votes were cast by only 1,252 members, two-thirds of whom approved the boycott, according to […]
By JTA
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan told rapper Kanye West not to apologize or bow to pressure over remarks that were called “classic anti-Semitism” by the Anti-Defamation League. “You are telling Kanye West he should know better,” Farrakhan said on Saturday during a weekly address for the Nation of Islam, directing his words at ADL […]
By JTA
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial 2013 conference in a video address Sunday, “Peace is not a one-way street. It’s a two-way street” in his efforts for a peaceful solution to the Iranian and Palestinian Authority issues. He also praised recent efforts to find a compromise solution to interdenominational […]
By JTA
A populist leader of a protest group told the La Repubblica newspaper Friday that Italy is “slave to the bankers, like the Rothschilds” and that “It is curious that five or six of the richest people in the world are Jews, but this is something I need to investigate.” The claims by Andrea Zunino, spokesman […]
By JTA
A suburb of Paris honored a man imprisoned for helping to murder diplomats from Israel and the United States. A majority of aldermen in the city council of Bagnolet east of the French capital voted on Wednesday to make the Lebanese citizen, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, an honorary resident, calling him a “communist activist” and “political […]
By JTA
A Spanish hotel built on the remains of a 15th century synagogue opened a new synagogue on its seventh floor. The opening last week at the four-star Parador de Lorca hotel in Lorca, a city in the southeastern region of Murcia, was the result of negotiations between management and the Sefarad Beitenu Jewish association, which […]
By JTA
The Union for Reform Judaism has sold off half of its headquarters in New York and is investing $1 million from the proceeds to overhaul its youth programming. The sale of one of the union’s two floors at its midtown Manhattan headquarters closed on Wednesday; Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the movement’s president, announced the sale in […]
By JTA
The United States is prepared to move against violators of its sanctions against Iran, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. “Our enforcement of the sanctions regime will be as unflinching as ever, so any CEO, general counsel or businessperson who thinks now might be a time to test our […]
By JTA
An Israeli army patrol working on the border with Lebanon came under fire Thursday and returned fire. No on was injured in the exchange. The soldiers were on patrol near Metullah, which borders Lebanon. The IDF is investigating but said that the source of the shooting could have been hunters on the other side of […]
By JTA
A Montreal blogger was cleared in a libel claim brought by leaders of the city’s Hasidic community. In clearing Pierre Lacerte, a Quebec Superior Court judge ruled last week that the blogger’s criticism was harsh but he had supported his claims with facts. Since 2007, Lacerte has used his blog to criticize Hasidim for things […]
By JTA
An Israeli playing basketball at Seton Hall University was ordered to return home to serve in the army. The Israel Defense Forces told Tom Maayan, a sophomore guard at the New Jersey college, to return by Jan. 2 to be drafted. Maayan had spent several months over the summer in basic training with the Israeli […]
By JTA
Bill Richardson, the former U.N. ambassador known for his efforts to release American captives overseas, called on President Obama to free Jonathan Pollard immediately. In a Dec. 10 letter to Obama, whom he endorsed after dropping out of the 2008 presidential race, Richardson noted that an increasing number of figures involved in government when Pollard […]
By JTA
The Union for Reform Judaism awarded one of its highest honors to an Orthodox rabbi, the late David Hartman, at the opening plenary of the union’s biennial conference in San Diego. On Wednesday evening, the union’s president, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, presented the Alexander M. Schindler World Jewry Award to Hartman’s son, Rabbi Donniel Hartman, president […]
By JTA
A sapling that came from the tree that stood outside the hiding place of Anne Frank in Amsterdam was cut down and stolen in Frankfurt, German police said. Unidentified parties cut down the 8-foot tree outside the Anne Frank School sometime between last week and Monday, according to a report Tuesday by the Dutch public […]
By JTA
A Jewish family may proceed with its legal battle to recover a valuable painting surrendered to the Nazis following a ruling by a U.S. appeals court on lost artwork. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Monday reinstated a California law allowing lawsuits to recover artwork lost as long as 100 […]
By JTA
A Dutch water company has cut ties with Israel, because Israel's water company, Mekorot, works in Judea and Samaria, supplying water to all the residents.
By JTA
Canadian immigration officials this week ordered a former leader of the ultra-nationalist Jobbik party in Hungary out of the country prior to a speaking engagement in Montreal. Csanad Szegedi was sent back to Budapest on a plane just before he was slated to address a Chabad group. Approximately 200 people who came out to hear […]
By JTA
A former hotel security guard pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge for defacing a Jewish school’s Torah scroll and prayer books. Justin Shawn Baker, age 25 and an Iraq War veteran, admitted during a plea hearing Monday in a Jackson, Tenn., court to violating the civil rights of students of the Margolin Hebrew […]
By JTA
A new initiative will use Jewish law to help “Agunot” women, separated from husbands who refuse to grant them a divorce that would let them re-marry.
By JTA
The British government is warning the business community to steer clear of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. New recommendations noting there are “clear risks” and the United Kingdom does “not offer support to such activity” were published last week on the U.K. Trade and Investment website in the section titled Overseas Business Risk–Israel. The […]
By JTA
Former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, who resigned amid sexual harassment accusations, was sentenced on Monday to three months of home confinement and three years’ probation for acts against three women. Filner, 71, pleaded guilty to the charges against him in October in exchange for a plea bargain that would keep him out of jail. […]
By JTA
Pennsylvania State College police have identified two men who allegedly painted anti-Semitic slogans and swastikas on and around a mostly Jewish fraternity on campus. The two men are white and college-age, the police said, according to the Centre Daily Time, and they face charges of ethnic intimidation, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct The slogans and […]
By JTA
Accused Nazi war criminal Hans Lipschis was released from custody in Germany after being diagnosed with dementia. The arrest warrant against Lipschis, 94, was canceled Friday due to a psychiatrist’s determination that the alleged former SS guard at Auschwitz was suffering from the early stages of the illness and therefore might not sufficiently understand and […]
By JTA
A New York City councilman tweeted about a new knockout attack days after a Jewish council offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of attack perpetrators. A 20-year-old woman was hit in the back of the head and fell to the ground while walking in the Flatbush section on Saturday afternoon, according to […]
By JTA
An Irish company will purchase Given Imaging Ltd., an Israeli firm that developed a swallowable camera to diagnose problems in the digestive tract. Covidien Plc agreed to acquire Given Imaging from shareholders of IDB Holding Corp. Ltd. for about $860 million, it was reported Sunday. Given Imaging is the inventor of the PillCam, a swallowed […]
August 7, 2026 
