Yearly Archives 2018

(JNS) As the Israel Defense Forces ploughs ahead with an operation to expose and destroy a network of Hezbollah tunnels snaking their way into northern Israel from Lebanon, the military must also be prepared for the risk of a sudden escalation with the powerful Shi’ite terrorist organization, a former… Read more »

BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — Israeli technology hired by Argentina to provide security during the G20 global leaders’ summit detected several unauthorized drone incidents. Despite previous fears, the participation of leaders from 19 countries and the European Union wasn’t affected. The Defense Ministry of Argentina signed a contract worth more… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When a presdent dies, the tendency is to put aside long-simmering resentments and consider the wholeness of his record. So it was when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remembered George Herbert Walker Bush, who died last week at 94. Despite the tense relationship with… Read more »

(Kveller via JTA) – “Winter is coming.” These three words have hung over mothers like dark clouds for decades, long before “Game of Thrones” came along. For we all know what that short, ominous phrase means: months of interminable sickness in the house. As the days shorten, germs will… Read more »

Though he was just 6 years old on the night of Kristallnacht, Rabbi Chanoch Ehrentreu can still recall the horror: Torah scrolls burning in the courtyard of his father’s synagogue. His father taken by the Gestapo to the concentration camp at Dachau. The grandson of a prominent rabbi from… Read more »

There’s no rule that says Jews are required to eat chicken on Shabbat — that is, no rule was ever handed down from a rabbi or written in the Torah. But it is a long-standing practice for many Eastern European Jewish families to serve roast chicken on Friday night.… Read more »

Winston Churchill was so impressed by Uganda during his 1907 safari that he wrote a book about it titled “My African Journey.” Published in 1908, Churchill wrote of the then-British Protectorate: “For magnificence, for variety of form and color, for profusion of brilliant life — bird, insect, reptile, beast… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — George H.W. Bush was a man of uncommon decency. He also was a man of uncommon integrity. I worked for him for over 10 years, while he was the vice president and then president. My memories could fill a book (or at least a chapter of… Read more »

(JTA) — Several days after the Jewish Daily Forward published the first-ever report from the Islamic Republic of Iran by a reporter openly representing a Jewish, pro-Israel news outlet, the host of CNN’s foreign affairs show “GPS” posed a vexing question. Citing the Forward’s surprisingly favorable account of the… Read more »

Central American migrants show the numbers to ask the US for political marked in their arms at the Migrant's House (Casa del Migrante) in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on November 15, 2018, in El Paso, Texas. (Photo by HERIKA MARTINEZ / AFP) (Photo credit should read HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Asylum-seeking migrants waiting in Mexico to gain entrance to the United States are having tracking numbers written on their arms in permanent marker, recalling the Holocaust when concentration camp inmates were tattooed with numbers. Accounts vary on when and who started the numbers-tracking practice in Mexico, but… Read more »

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (JTA) — Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, his Israeli-born wife, Miriam, and Haim Saban, the Israeli-American entertainment mogul, entered the deck of the pool complex at the Diplomat Hotel here on Saturday night and chose a table to sit around and well, schmooze. Never mind the frantic… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – George H.W. Bush, the one-term president whose public grappling with Jewish leaders made headlines while his private interventions helped bring tens of thousands of Jews out of danger, has died. Bush, 94, died Friday at his home in Houston, his family said, less than a year… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — This is a story of gratitude. So much gratitude. In 1983, my local rabbi handed me his guitar and taught me four chords. He said (paraphrasing the first century sage Hillel) “Lisa, with these four chords you can play any Jewish song. All the rest… Read more »

Three years ago, Don Was walked into a Jewish service in Los Angeles without high expectations. Was, born Don Fagenson in Detroit, is a producer who has worked with musicians like John Mayer, Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt. Since 2012, he has also been the president of Blue Note… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Opposition to vaccination on political and religious grounds has been swaying parents across the country to refuse immunizations for their children. Recently this has resulted in two of the largest measles outbreaks in New York’s history, impacting haredi Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. The opposition to vaccines… Read more »

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(JTA) — Do you go to shul, temple, synagogue, minyan or just services? Let me ask it another way: That synagogue you won’t set foot in — Do you call it a shul, temple, synagogue, minyan or services? I’m not being judgy. It’s a question about language. Working at… Read more »

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Shopping was the last thing on Sarah Hirsch’s mind this summer when she boarded a flight from Tel Aviv to this capital city. It started out as a Holocaust pilgrimage. Hirsch, 67, flew to Warsaw in August with her husband, Naftali, and a friend to… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Had she received a better Jewish education, Marianne Williamson says, she might have become a rabbi. Instead, Williamson has become one of the country’s best-known New Age self-help gurus, reaching millions of people over more than three decades in the public eye. She counts Oprah… Read more »

JScreen Offers Hanukkah Discount and Highlights Top 5 Reasons You Should Spit with Your Partner (Atlanta)—JScreen, a not-for-profit at home education and genetic carrier screening program, highlights the top 5 reasons couples should spit to ensure that they receive essential genetic information that can help them plan… Read more »