News

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum said it will file a complaint with the Polish prosecutor against an Israeli woman, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, who removed relics from site. Rotem Bides, 27, an art student at the Beit Berl College in Kfar Saba, visited the Auschwitz… Read more »

Europe is undermining its own security by undermining Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday as he was caught on live microphone bashing the European Union at a meeting with the leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia in Budapest. “We have a peculiar situation here. The… Read more »

Summer in Jerusalem: As Israel continues to sweat through the hottest summer on record the Jewish Quarter of the Old City is full of tourists, seemingly oblivious to the heat. The restaurants leading from the Quarter towards the Western Wall pump with life, as does the Hurva Square, the… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Barack Obama is gone and the relief among the Christian Zionists and their Jewish friends who peopled certain corners of Washington, D.C., this week was palpable. Gary Bauer, the veteran evangelical activist, laid it out at the opening session of Christians United for Israel’s annual conference on… Read more »

(JTA) — At 3 1/2, Peretz Apfelbaum may not completely understand it yet, but some kitchens can put his life in danger. The Brooklyn boy is allergic to peanuts, cashews, pistachios, flax seeds, mustard seeds, coconut, peas, eggs and beef. Some of the foods give him hives, but the nuts can… Read more »

Gretchen Rachel Hammond first reported that three Jewish women carrying rainbow flags emblazoned with Jewish stars were kicked out of the June 24 march. (Courtesy of Hammond)

  NEW YORK (JTA) — The journalist who first reported the ejection of three Jewish women from Chicago’s Dyke March tweeted that she was removed from her reporting job because of that article. In a tweet Monday, Gretchen Rachel Hammond wrote to Dyke March’s Twitter account that “You attacked, humiliated… Read more »

  NEW YORK (JTA) – The Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s so-called “blacklist” of Diaspora rabbis runs the denominational gamut. The rabbis on the list, whose letters confirming the Jewish identities of immigrants were rejected by the Chief Rabbinate in 2016, are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform — and even from the smaller… Read more »

  JERUSALEM (JTA) – When Nedal Sader first heard the crackle of automatic weapon fire Friday morning, he couldn’t believe it was coming from the Temple Mount. As a Muslim, he regarded the complex just outside his apartment as a sacred and peaceful place. He prayed there nearly every week. But… Read more »

  PARIS (JTA) — It wasn’t the first time that a French president acknowledged his nation’s Holocaust-era guilt, but Emmanuel Macron’s speech Sunday was nonetheless groundbreaking in format, content and style. Delivered during a ceremony at the Vel d’Hiv Holocaust memorial monument exactly 75 years after French police officers rounded up 13,152… Read more »

(The Nosher via JTA) — If I am being honest, I have struggled in the past with making a good potato salad. It seems simple enough — boiled potatoes, mayo, some spices. But there is a bit of an art and science to making potato salad to ensure it… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Alan Gross contacted me a couple of months ago over Facebook Messenger. There was something he thought I should know. I was pleasantly surprised. I’d only exchanged pleasantries with Gross in the several times I’d seen him since his release from a Cuban prison in December… Read more »

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — When Gołda Tencer, the director of the Shalom Foundation and the Jewish Theater in Warsaw, lit the Sabbath candles last Friday, she was accompanied by dozens of people from various countries. Though their mother tongues differed, the voices at the table were united by a common… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Facing mounting scandals, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the “fake news” media and “leftists” of trying to take him down with a campaign of lies. In a hastily organized meeting with political allies Thursday, Netanyahu denied any wrongdoing in two erupting controversies involving his associates, the… Read more »

CARPENTRAS, France (JTA) — The synagogue in this Provence town is Western Europe’s oldest functioning Jewish house of worship — and one of the prettiest on the continent. The Synagogue of Carpentras, which this year is celebrating its 650th anniversary, has a Baroque-style interior and a gold-ornamented hall with a blue… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — In 2012, Rabbi Jason Herman wrote a letter to Israel’s Chief Rabbinate certifying that a friend of his who wished to get married was Jewish and single. The letter was declared invalid. But several months later Herman, spiritual leader of the Orthodox West Side Jewish… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — He’s charismatic. He’s an outsider. And he’s a political centrist. Some have hailed Avi Gabbay, the telecom exec who was elected Monday to lead the center-left Labor Party, as Israel’s version of French President Emmanuel Macron, the banker who recently swept to power with an… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Carmel Shama HaCohen, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, is second to none in his admiration for the Trump administration’s United Nations envoy, Nikki Haley. In fact, he’d like to clone her. Shama HaCohen appreciated Haley’s efforts in trying to head off last week’s vote by UNESCO’s Heritage… Read more »

(JTA) — The Israeli Chief Rabbinate says that its list of foreign rabbis has been misconstrued, and that the list does not imply that those rabbis cannot be trusted to vouch for the Jewish identities of their followers. On Saturday, JTA reported on a list of some 160 rabbis… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — American Orthodox leaders have a message for their non-Orthodox friends: Take a deep breath. When Israel’s cabinet voted twice to further empower the country’s haredi Orthodox religious establishment last month, Reform, Conservative and non-Orthodox Zionist leaders were outraged. They cancelled meetings with Israel’s prime minister.… Read more »

MOUNT KISCO, N.Y. (JTA) – When Michael Steinhardt strolls around his 55-acre backyard for 90 minutes every morning, one of his favorite animals to see is the scimitar-horned oryx, whose antlers sweep back from its head like the swords for which they are named. But Steinhardt didn’t much like… Read more »