By JTA
Several Jewish organizations in Hungary as a form of protest will not accept government grants for memorial events marking the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust. The groups are protesting what they consider the state’s whitewashing of Hungary’s role in the Holocaust. The organizations turning down the grants from the Civil Fund include the Frankel Leo […]
By JTA
Gital Dodelson, the “chained” woman featured on the front page of the New York Post last fall, says she has received a get, or religious writ of divorce, from her husband. The announcement appeared Wednesday afternoon on a Facebook page dedicated to helping Dodelson obtain a get and was confirmed by a publicist who has […]
Had a Muslim woman been stopped for reading Islamic materials, it would be front page news everywhere.
The giant Dutch ABP pension fund has rejected dis-investing from Israeli firms as was done earlier the past several days by funds in Denmark and Norway. The bank announced that it issued a statement that it is holding on to its investments in three Israel companies because of the publicity over the other funds’ boycott […]
The Al Jazeera network aired a 25-minute program weed that was a bald-faced commercial for boycotting Israel under the guise of a supposed news program that featured two pro-Arab interviewees and, just to make an uneven program seem half-legitimate, Danny Dayan of the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria. Throughout the entire […]
Reform leaders too often make themselves look silly by bending the Bible for their own convenience.
Boycotting a boycotter could boomerang, despite all of the good intentions off those behind the idea.
By JTA
Croatian authorities are investigating a 90-year-old man suspected of committing war crimes as an SS soldier and guard at the Auschwitz death camp. Germany’s Special Prosecutor’s Office for Investigation of Crimes during the Period of National Socialism last month alerted Croatian authorities to the presence in Croatia of Jacob Dencinger, the Croatian news outlet Jutarnji […]
Canada’s Employment minister Jason Kenney has countered the BDS ‘Boycott SodaStream” campaign by buying one of the company’s soda-making machines and crediting Oxfam for the idea. Oxfam has dumped Scarlett Johansson as an ambassador because she signed up to promote SodaStream whose 20 factories around the world include one in the industrial area of Maaleh […]
The Israeli Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the government to cease all funding of yeshivas whose students do not enlist in the IDF. The decision struck in one blow further sealed the fate of Haredi leaders fighting the “equal burden” policy pursued by Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid and also gave him a needed […]
By JTA
Agudath Israel of America has asked the Pentagon to restore kosher field meals and charged that the Defense Logistics Agency had solicited a bid in April for kosher and halal “meals ready to eat,” but had recast the solicitation last month to include only halal, which adhere to Muslim religious precepts. “As things stand now, […]
A UNESCO bioethics unit harshly condemned the ASA's boycott of Israeli academics.
Three Air France union officials “joyfully” performed the Quenelle reverse Nazi salute at a rally last November but not reported until this week by the French Liberation newspaper. Air France management issued a statement condemning the salute, according to the European Jewish Press, which reported they were “extremely shocked” and promise ”to take appropriate actions,” […]
A rabbi and his daughter at the Chabad Lubavitch day care center in Salt Lake City, Utah saved two Torah scrolls from possible destruction Monday after he smelled smoke in the building. Twenty children, including five infants, were evacuated, according to the local Tribune newspaper. A faulty furnace was cited as the source of the […]
By JTA
An Ontario judge ruled Monday that children from a fringe Haredi sect whose members fled Quebec while the community was being investigated by social services should be returned to the province. The court upheld a Quebec order to place 13 children from the Lev Tahor sect into temporary foster care, The Canadian Press reported, but […]
A group of "progressive" Jews attacked Mayor de Blasio because he told AIPAC his door was open to them.
By JTA
The French comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, creator of the anti-Semitic quenelle gesture, was banned from entering Britain by the Home Office, British newspapers reported Monday. Dieudonne reportedly had announced that he would visit London to support Nicolas Anelka, a French national playing for the West Bromwich Albion British soccer team, who has been charged by […]
By JTA
A marriage proposal awaited a runner at the finish line of the Miami Marathon. New Yorker Rachel Avisrur, who was running in Sunday’s marathon to raise money and awareness for Chai Lifeline, was surprised to find her boyfriend Avi Wolf, kneeling with his black kippa on his head, at the finish line holding a bouquet […]
Bennett is bringing Israel into the 21st century with a new system that will encourage more people to eat kosher.
By JTA
A newborn in New York who underwent his ritual circumcision rite is undergoing treatment for neonatal genital herpes, according to the Forward, contracted after metzitzah b’peh, in which the ritual circumciser places his mouth directly on the child’s circumcision wound to revive the shocked blood stream. The New York City Department of Health and Mental […]
By JTA
Rabbi Mordechai “Motti” Elon, an Israeli Modern Orthodox leader, will not appeal his conviction on two charges of sexually assaulting a minor. Elon, 55, said he decided not to appeal the conviction on the advice of his family, which has asked him to move on, Ynet reported Sunday. The rabbi’s attorney said he stood a […]
Barry Rubin's was a rare voices of clarity in the Israeli academia and in Jewish media. He was one of the good guys.
By Shalom Bear
Denmark's Danske Bank is boycotting Israeli banks, but had no problem with servicing a North Korean missile companies trading with Iran. What does that tell you?
Italian police have identified the man who sent the pig heads to Rome's main shul.
By JTA
Anne Heyman, a Jewish philanthropist who founded a Rwandan youth village for children orphaned in that country’s 1994 genocide, died in a horse-riding accident. Heyman, 52, died Friday afternoon after falling off a horse during a jumping competition at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center in Florida, The Palm Beach Post reported. Heyman’s interest in […]
By JTA
Norway’s government instructed a state-run pension fund not to invest in two Israeli firms because of their activity in eastern Jerusalem. The decision regarding the Government Pension Fund Global, or GPFG, appeared Thursday on the website of Norway’s finance ministry. It named two Israeli construction firms, Africa Israel Investments and Danya Cebus, as well as […]
By JTA
German museums must improve their record on identifying and returning Nazi looted art, World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said. Speaking to some 200 people Tuesday at the Topography of Terror, a museum and documentation center in the German capital, Lauder said that a new commission of independent experts must be appointed to comb through […]
By JTA
Detroit’s Jewish federation has hired an accounting firm to investigate possible financial irregularities at the local Jewish Community Center. In addition to hiring tax and auditing firm to conduct a “forensic investigation” of the center, the federation retained a separate firm to take over the center’s financial operations of the center, the Detroit Free Press […]
By JTA
Twenty-four European parliamentarians called on the European Union to reinstate its working definition of anti-Semitism. The call was unanimously adopted on Tuesday by the lawmakers, who had traveled to Poland earlier this week to attend a ceremonial joint session with 58 Knesset members and dozens of counterparts from the Polish parliament on International Holocaust Remembrance […]
By JTA
Oxfam accepted actress Scarlett Johansson’s resignation as a global ambassador, calling the role “incompatible” with her work for the Israeli company SodaStream. “Oxfam has accepted Scarlett Johansson’s decision to step down after eight years as a Global Ambassador and we are grateful for her many contributions,” the global anti-poverty charity said in a statement issued […]
Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, the dean of Jewish lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives, said Thursday he will retire, and Republicans immediately jumped on the announcement as a sign of weakness in the Democratic party. He was first elected to Congress from a Los Angeles-area district in 1974, and his resignation will take effect […]
By JTA
A trove of documents from the Nuremberg Trials found in a flea market in Israel was sold at auction Wednesday for $10,000, a spokesman for the Kedem Auction House in Jerusalem told the Associated Press. The trove of 500 pages, An American collector bought the documents, including some used to convict top Nazis at the […]
The difference between Hitler and Belgium legislator Laurent Louis is 80 years and a moustache.
The so-called French comedian Dieudonne is a suspect for money laundering after police raided his Paris home Tuesday and found more than $1 million in cash there and in a theatre he operates. If charged and convicted, his previous hate crimes, primarily anti-Semitic slurs against Jews, will seem like petty theft, and God willing, his […]
The difference between Yair Netanyahu and Anthony Weiner and Hillary Clinton is that Israel is a Jewish state.
By JTA
French choreographer Benjamin Millepied, husband of Jewish actress Natalie Portman, told an Israeli newspaper that he is converting to Judaism. Millepied told the Hebrew-language Yediot Acharonot that he is “in the middle of the conversion process.” He added that he hopes that the conversion process will “come to an end soon and I will become […]
By Jewish News Syndicate (JNS)
Legendary folk singer and political activist Pete Seeger, who died on Monday in New York City at the age of 94, left behind a complicated if not questionable legacy when it came to Israel. Famous for 1960s hits like “If I Had a Hammer,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” Seeger […]
By JTA
A new Jewish community was dedicated in the former East Berlin, in the footsteps of one destroyed by the Nazis. In an odd twist, the community has the same name as another Berlin congregation that is mired in legal limbo and debt after failing to prove it has any members. In Tuesday’s ceremonies at the […]
By JTA
Nazi-looted paintings recovered by the Allies platoon known as the Monuments Men will be sold at auction in New York. The four lots will go on the block at Sotheby’s in New York on Thursday as part of a sale of Old Master paintings and sculpture. Some of the works were owned by the Rothschild […]
By JTA
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Israeli President Shimon Peres paid tribute to Edgar Bronfman at a public memorial service Tuesday night. More than 1,000 people, including top Jewish communal leaders and alumni of the Bronfman Youth Fellowship program, turned out for the service held at Lincoln Center in New York. Bronfman, who […]
The question remains: Does Wasserman Schultz oppose the current sanctions bill or not?
By JTA
The Anti-Defamation League has accepted the “heartfelt apology” from venture capitalist Thomas Perkins, who likened criticism of the wealthy to Kristallnacht. “We believe that Mr. Perkins now realizes why his Holocaust comparison was so offensive,” the ADL said in a statement after a long conversation Monday between Perkins and the ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman. […]
The official Palestinian Authority daily last week, days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, published an op-ed demonizing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who it said has Nazi genes that he may have “acquired it genetically from the days of the Nazis and the Aryan race." The report, translated and published by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), […]
The Helmsley Charitable trust, which was bankrolled by the late hotel tycoon “Queen of Mean” Leona Helmsley, has donated $25 million to Haifa University, which will use the funds for undersea robots and automated vehicles and undersea laboratories for its new Mediterranean Sea Research Center. Her name became more widely known for her including her […]
By JTA
Chile’s Palestine Football Club, after being fined for wearing uniforms on which the number one in players’ numbers in the backs of their shirts were represented by a map of Israel as Palestine, unveiled its new uniforms that now show exactly the same thing on the front of the shirt. Inset into the players’ numbers […]
Neturei Karta is shooting itself in the head with its anti-Zionist antics, and that might be all for the best.
The Ruderman Foundation Prize went to a global leader in extending rights to those with disabilities
Maybe the crow and the seagull know something that most of us know but the pope won’t believe.
By JTA
A march through Paris against French President Francois Hollande ended with anti-Semitic chants and cries of support for an anti-Semitic comedian. At least 150 protesters were arrested in the “Day of Anger” demonstrations on Sunday, according to reports. Nineteen police officers were injured in clashes with protesters, one seriously, the French news agency AFP reported. […]
Jewish leaders may be taking a big risk by charging that refusing to free Pollard is a vendetta against US Jews
A recently-discovered letter sent to Hitler in 1939 offered him 100,000 Palestine lira in exchange for allowing Jews to buy land in Gush Etzion and move to Israel. The proposal, which was sent in a letter dated April 9, 1939, but was not carried out. Researchers at the Kfar Etzion Museum found a copy of […]
By JTA
Dozens of lawmakers from Israel, the United States and Europe convened at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau for ceremonies commemorating its liberation 69 years ago. The largest foreign parliamentary delegation landed in Poland from Israel on Monday, Jan. 27 — the day that the United Nations in 2005 designated as International Holocaust Remembrance […]
“If we prohibit it [circumcision], we must also address the issue of the Christian ritual of baptism.”
By JTA
Holocaust historian Randoph Braham is returning a high honor from the Hungarian state as a protest against attempts to whitewash Hungary’s role in the Holocaust, Braham said in a letter quoted by the Hungarian state news agency MTI on Sunday. Braham, 91, a Holocaust survivor, wrote that he was handing back the Cross of the […]
The Lehava Organization for the Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land appealed to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Sunday to break up his son Yair’s relationship with a Norwegian non-Jew. Yair Netanyahu is dating Sandra Leikange a fellow student, Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, The Jewish Press reported here earlier today. Citing the Prime Minister’s late […]
By Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency
Two unusual events relating to Holocaust remembrance recently took place in the Arab world – a first official conference on the Holocaust in Tunisia and the first visit by an Arab diplomat to a Holocaust memorial site, when Bahraini ambassador to France Nasser Al-Balushi visited a memorial near Paris. The Middle East Media Research Institute […]
By Jewish News Syndicate (JNS)
The White House on Friday announced the appointment of Aviva Sufian as the first Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Special Envoy for U.S. Holocaust Survivor Services. Vice President Joe Biden had announced the formation of the new position in December 2013. Sufian “will focus on those [Holocaust] survivors currently living in poverty, as […]
Nearly one-third of European Jews are considering emigrating because of rising anti-Semitism, and 25 percent of Jews in Europe are afraid to appear in public with cloths or symbols that would identify them as Jews, a new report reveals. There was no indication of which countries were the desired new homes of those wanting to […]
By Tibbi Singer
Yair and Leikanger met at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.
By JTA
A French advertiser scaled back a campaign for the dating site JDate after its billboards were vandalized. Thierry Courrault, a regional director for the JC Decaux billboard giant, said his company decided to pull 18 billboards out of 100 advertising JDate. The reason was “vandalism against out property (swastika graffiti and broken windowpanes),” he told […]
By JTA
Brandeis University disclosed that it paid former university president Jehuda Reinharz $811,000 for accumulated sabbatical leave that he never took during his 17-year presidency. The payment was part of a $4.9 million lump sum payment Reinharz received Jan. 2 as deferred compensation, according to a statement issued by Brandeis. The amounts paid were set aside […]
J Street brazenly brazenly ignored a firm commitment to Philadelphia's Hillels. There were no consequences.
By JTA
The owners of a Jewish deli in Albuquerque found an anti-Semitic death message stuck to her establishment’s front door on a mailing label. “To the Kikes who should die,” the message stuck on the front door of the Nosh Deli said, KOB Eyewitness News 4 in Albuquerque reported. A second label read, “To the Kikes […]
A Canadian Jewish legislator lost out on an attempt for a “million dollar shot” with Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a visit to the Western Wall (Kotel), Canadian media reported. Jewish Conservative Member of Parliament Mark Adler is looking ahead to next year’s election in his district where nearly 20 percent of the residents are […]
The world’s most enticing woman inadvertently is exposing the BDS as being bad for Arabs.
An authentic German train car that transported Jews to concentration camps will be placed at the Netanya Memorial Site and service as a “living monument” and educational center in memory of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust The car will arrive in Netanya tomorrow on Friday and will be the first time it has been […]
Bernard Madoff suffered a heart attack in prison last month and was hospitalized, CNBC revealed Wednesday after receiving an email from the 75-year-old Ponzi scheme rip-off artist. Madoff also is suffering from stage four kidney disease. He former stockbroker wrote that he spent most of last month in the Duke University Medical Center and that […]
By JTA
The Pentagon made clear in an order that troops may accommodate religious beliefs in their garb or grooming as long as it does not frustrate their mission. “The new policy states that military departments will accommodate religious requests of service members unless a request would have an adverse effect on military readiness, mission accomplishment, unit […]
By JTA
The French comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala was arrested for allegedly assaulting court officers who came to his home with notices for payments due on fines for inciting hatred against Jews. Dieudonne, who owes nearly $100,000 for several hate speech convictions, was arrested Tuesday night, according to a report by the French news agency AFP. He […]
By JTA
A second Modern Orthodox high school in New York has announced it will permit girls to wear tefillin during prayer. The Ramaz School in Manhattan said it will allow girls to wear tefillin during coed worship, going one step further than SAR High School, which drew a flurry of media coverage earlier this week for […]
By JTA
The president of France’s main Jewish group has toned down his blanket condemnation of the quenelle gesture and said it is not necessarily anti-Semitic. Roger Cukierman of the CRIF umbrella group adjusted his position in a filmed interview published Tuesday on the website of the Le Figaro daily. Reacting to the decision that day by […]
A new satirical new site called “PreOccupied Territory” features a Jewish and Israeli perspective on news around the world as seen by journalist David Swidler, who also is behind the blog “Mightier than the Pen.” His objective is to make the news more understandable through humor, something The Jewish Press does on a regular basis […]
By JTA
New York City has dropped a lawsuit against Hasidic-owned stores that posted a dress code for shoppers. The New York City Human Rights Commission reached a settlement with the seven Hasidic-owned shops in a lawsuit the city had filed alleging that the stores’ posted dress codes implied gender and religious discrimination, according to the New […]
By Chabad.org
Canadian Chabad rabbis accompanied Harper on his trip.
"That symbol on anyone's head is anti-Semitic," said Libby Schaaf. Her father was born Jewish and she is proud of her Jewish heritage.
You'd never know from UNESCO's "postponement" announcement that the exhibition was called off because of Arab pressure, rather than because the exhibition wasn't ready.
Yiddish messages rooted in Jewish liturgy and Biblical texts encouraging Jews to make Aliyah.
By JTA
Fliers hung in the Oakland, Calif., Montclair neighborhood of Jewish city councilwoman Libby Schaaf show a swastika drawn on her forehead. The fliers hung district represented by Schaaf read, “Stop Schaaf. Stop the DAC” (domain awareness center) — a reference to a city plan to build a combined surveillance center for police and firefighters. Schaaf, […]
Israelis forget that normal countries with normal police arrest abnormal hotheads.
The University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg has given a suspended sentence of a one-year ouster to 11 students charged with disrupting a concert last march by Israeli-born pianist Yosef Reshef on the university campus. The students and other Muslims and BDS extremists broke into the auditorium and forced the cancellation of a performance the world-renowned […]
By JTA
More than 1,000 people have applied for new compensation of a one-time payment of $2,700 from Germany for labor performed in Amsterdam’s Jewish ghetto during the Holocaust. The compensation is offered to people who lived in three districts of the Dutch capital that served as ghettos for the city’s Jewish community during the German occupation […]
A Be'er Sheva court sentenced Tuesday sentenced Asher Dahan to life in prison for stabbing to death Rabbi Elazar Abuhatzeira, grandson of the revered Baba Sali, in July 2011. In a clear-cut version of “the Devil made me do it” defense, the 45-year-old murdered said he was angry at the rabbi for not advising him […]
By JTA
Nearly 350 years after his wrongful execution, a French Jew who had been convicted of a blood libel was exonerated and declared a martyr. The village of Glatigny in the eastern district of Moselle set the record straight Sunday on the wrongful conviction of Raphael Levy in 1670 for murder. Levy, a simple merchant, was […]
By JTA
British lawmaker David Ward has raised Jewish ire again for tweeting two days after the death of Ariel Sharon. “Sharon’s death makes you think. The brutal, genocidal treatment of Jews must never be forgotten but … the Palestinians were not responsible.” One tweet in response to Ward, by British Jewish gay rights activist Benjamin Cohen, […]
Her husband took a big risk by marrying an American. Especially one who was Jewish. She was alone.
SAR High School in Riverdale, New York, is now allowing girls to wrap tefillin during Shacharit-morning prayer, probably the first Modern Orthodox high school in the U.S. to do so, reports The Boiling Point, the online student newspaper of Shalhevet High School in LA. Two girls were granted permission to wrap tefillin and wear a […]
By JTA
Romania supports in principle Israel’s demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish state but encourages compromises on this and other issues, Romanian President Traian Basescu said. Speaking to JTA at his presidential palace two days before an Israel visit that began Sunday, Basescu said that “if they [the Palestinians] want peace, they must […]
By JTA
Hungarian Jewish leaders demanded the resignation of a key government appointee and threatened to boycott government-sponsored events marking the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary. In an unusually strong statement posted Sunday on its website, the leadership of Mazsihisz, the official Hungarian Jewish umbrella organization, said they were “aghast and find incomprehensible” the “relativization […]
A Crown Heights Shul was burglarized on Friday night and the thief made off with the silver crown of the Sefer Torah, tools, a guitar and other items of value, crownheights.info reported. The theft occurred in Chevra Ahavas Yisroel on Albany Avenue and Lincoln Place, and was discovered Shabbat Morning when the Shuls Rabbi, Rabbi Chezzi […]
Hadassah New Zealand is planning to raise funds for the Rozana Project by participating in the March 2014 Jerusalem marathon and generating donations from sponsors in New Zealand and Israel, J-wire reported. Tali Dowek, the Director of Hadassah’s Department of Development, Donors & Events, said that since the launch of the Rozana Project, about 2 […]
By Shalom Bear
A new "Mehadrin" level Kashrut certification introduced by the Jerusalem Rabbinate is beginning to gain traction and save restaurants money.
By JTA
A bipartisan slate of 134 U.S. Congress members wrote a letter to the American Studies Association protesting its decision last month to boycott Israeli universities. “Academic cooperation can be an important tool to help foster peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but you have chosen the unproductive path of isolation,” said the letter dated Friday, initiated […]
By JTA
On Friday night, 3 youths jumped and stabbed a yeshiva student on his way home.
By JTA
The U.S. Senate’s Special Committee on Aging held a hearing on the plight of Holocaust survivors in the United States. Both Republicans and Democrats on the committee said at the Wednesday hearing that survivors are better off aging at home. “The emphasis on caring for aging survivors must be on creating a safe space surrounded […]
By JTA
Moroccan police are investigating the death of two Jewish sisters in their home in the central city of Beni Mellal. The sisters, whose names were not made public, were found earlier this week in a state of advanced decomposition and are believed to have died three months ago inside their locked home, the news site […]
By JTA
Juliana Rangel, icj, Nuremberg trials, isaac stone, kedem, Chabad Berlin
By JTA
Congress budgeted $13 million for a nonprofit security assistance program that mostly aids Jewish institutions. The money was allocated in the $1.1 trillion budget passed this week by both houses of Congress. The program, which has existed since the mid-2000s, has so far disbursed $138 million through the Department of Homeland Security, not counting the […]
By JTA
Natan Sharansky joined the parents and spouses of political prisoners in asking the U.S. Congress to speak of their loved ones during meetings with foreign officials. Sharansky, imprisoned by the Soviets for nine years because of his activism on behalf of Soviet Jews, recalled at a hearing Thursday that his jailers told him, “You are […]
By JTA
A Jewish community center in San Diego cancelled a concert by Eyal Golan amid suspicions that the Israeli singer had sex with minors, an Israeli radio station reported. Golan was slated to perform Jan. 19 at a concert which was advertised as late as Jan. 10 on the website of the Lawrence Family Jewish Community […]
By JTA
Leaders of Belgium’s Jewish community rallied outside the French embassy in Brussels to thank the French government for its efforts to keep an antisemitic comedian from touring. The demonstration Wednesday was organized by the CCOJB umbrella group representing French-speaking Belgian Jews. Some 70 people showed up, police told a Belgian news agency, bearing signs reading: […]