News

(JTA) — The principal of a charter school in Arizona no longer has his job after a former employee posted on social media a series of anti-Semitic and racist messages the principal sent to her. Justin Dye left the Heritage Elementary Charter School in Glendale on Monday, the Arizona… Read more »

For those under evacuation orders — currently north of Ina Road from 1st Avenue to Alvernon Road — there is a Facebook group for people looking for/offering pet and livestock shelter. Sign up for the Pima County Emergency Alert Notification system. Stay safe, everyone!… Read more »

CLEVELAND (JTA) — I turned on my phone and felt an overwhelming sense of frustration, sadness and hopelessness. While I had been enjoying two days without electronics in observance of Shavuot and Shabbat, cities across the country were engulfed in a combination of civic protests and police riots. Weapons… Read more »

(JTA) — President Donald Trump authorized sanctions against the International Criminal Court should it pursue cases against U.S. citizens and cited what he said was its anti-Israel bias. In an executive order issued Thursday, Trump approved economic sanctions and travel restrictions against ICC workers directly involved in investigating American… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Supreme Court struck down a 2017 law that would allow the expropriation of private Palestinian land on which illegal outpost homes were built. The ruling issued Tuesday in an 8-1 decision said the law “infringes on property rights and equality for Palestinian residents, and places… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The number of deaths from the coronavirus in Israel reached 300 as a resurgence of COVID-19 followed the reopening of schools and many businesses. In recent days, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 has topped 100 after it had been tamped down to under 20.… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The leading pro-Israel lobby in the United States is telling lawmakers that they are free to criticize Israel’s looming annexation plans — just as long as the criticism stops there. Two sources — a congressional aide and a donor — say the American Israel Public Affairs… Read more »

(JTA) – In the  past few months, UJA-Federation of New York has awarded millions of dollars in emergency grants to help organizations survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Now it’s joining the ranks of organizations having to let go of its own staff members as it anticipates declining donations. And its… Read more »

(JTA) – Shevi Samet started her Instagram livestream by letting out a long, deep breath. “How are you?” she asked her co-presenter and fellow Instagrammer Shoshana Greenwald. “So, so nervous,” Greenwald replied. “So nervous, so nervous,” Samet echoed. “I just want to address that briefly: Shoshana and I are… Read more »

(JTA) — More than 800 rabbis and cantors, including the leaders of three major denominations, signed a statement in support of peaceful protest against racism and in memory of George Floyd. The statement invoked Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, an iconic Jewish civil rights activist who marched with the Rev.… Read more »

The Southern Arizona Jewish community lost one of its most energetic and beloved volunteers when Patty Vallance, 62, died June 3, 2020. “We lost a one-of-a-kind force for good,” Stuart Mellan, former president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, wrote on Facebook. “She wore her Jewish… Read more »

(JTA) — Nearly half the Jewish sites in Syria and a quarter of the sites in Iraq have been destroyed, according to a research project. In Iraq, at least 68 out of 297 Jewish heritage sites have deteriorated to the point that they are beyond repair, the London-based Jewish… Read more »

(JTA) – Shuly Rubin Schwartz’s appointment as the Jewish Theological Seminary’s eighth chancellor comes just in time for the historian to guide the institution through a period of unprecedented crisis management. The flagship university of Judaism’s Conservative movement recently completed a major renovation project of its Morningside Heights campus… Read more »

(JTA) – On Sunday night, Rabbi Richard Altabe marched arm in arm with two black politicians protesting police brutality at a demonstration in Far Rockaway. The next morning, Orthodox Jews in the same New York neighborhood showed up at the local police precinct to drop off pastries for the… Read more »

(JTA) — It has been a trying week and a half for Beejhy Barhany. Her Israeli-Ethiopian fusion restaurant, Tsion Cafe, had already been struggling to make ends meet after months of closure due to the pandemic. Then the protests over the death of George Floyd swept through the city,… Read more »

(JTA) — The Department of Veterans Affairs announced that it will begin the process of replacing three gravestones bearing swastikas in cemeteries in Texas and Utah, less than a month after saying they would be preserved as “historic resources.” The VA told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last month that… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a conference call with Jared Kushner and other top White House officials to discuss slowing down West Bank annexation plans, an Israeli TV station reported. Channel 13  in its report Monday cited an unnamed senior Israeli source that the Trump… Read more »

(JTA) — Dozens of American Jewish groups have pledged to work to end systemic racism in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis. In a statement Tuesday, 130 organizations said they were “outraged” by the killing of Floyd, a black man who died in police custody last… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — As Kielahtiel Barton stood across from the former American embassy here, on a sidewalk next to a downtown beach, a large crowd around her chanted slogans calling for racial equality. “Why am I here? I’m black as hell and my skin color is the first… Read more »

(JTA) — Shuly Rubin Schwartz, an expert on Jewish American history and longtime professor, will be the first woman chancellor in the 134-year history of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Schwartz, who served as provost — also the first woman in that position — will be eighth chancellor in the… Read more »