News

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Less than a year ago, Stav Shaffir’s meteoric rise in Israeli politics seemed like it was continuing ever upward. Now the outspoken millennial advocate for liberal Zionism and social justice won’t even be running for office, her future uncertain. Her career appears to be a casualty… Read more »

(JTA) — The United Kingdom designated the entire Hezbollah organization as a terrorist group and froze its assets. The Finance Ministry move, which was announced Friday, is part of the implementation of the UK’s Terrorism and Terrorist Financing rules, Reuters reported. Until now, only Hezbollah’s military wing was subject… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The post-debate analysis this week focused largely on the ongoing spat between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. While we hope they can sort that out soon, the debate featured something else more relevant to JTA readers: Everyone on stage thought that President Donald Trump made a… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Alan Dershowitz, the constitutional scholar, will join President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team. “Professor Dershowitz will present oral arguments at the Senate trial to address the constitutional arguments against impeachment and removal,” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman quoted Trump’s legal team as saying on Friday.… Read more »

(JTA) — Hundreds of Muslims chanted about killing Jews outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on Friday morning, prompting police to disperse the crowd. The chants began as worshippers were leaving the mosque following prayers atop the Temple Mount, Israel’s Channel 13 reported. No one was injured in clashes… Read more »

(JTA) — The Chelsea soccer club in Britain marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a commemorative mural of Jewish players and prisoners of war who were sent to a Nazi camp. The mural was unveiled Wednesday on a wall outside of the West Stand at Stamford Bridge and is… Read more »

(JTA) — Ukraine’s parliament for the first time commemorated the Holocaust ahead of the international date in memory of the victims. The Verkohvna Rada in Kyiv held a memorial ceremony on Thursday ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27. The date was designated in 2005 by the… Read more »

(JTA) — Gladys Bourdain, who convinced an editor to publish the first article written by her chef son Anthony, has died. Bourdain died in hospice on Friday in the Bronx, New York. She was 85. She worked for nearly 25 years as a copy editor at the New York… Read more »

(JTA) — A Jewish organization in Ukraine said that the number of anti-Semitic incidents documented there last year decreased by 27 percent over 2018. The United Jewish Community of Ukraine, one of several groups representing Ukrainian Jewry, said in a report published Monday that it has documented 66 anti-Semitic… Read more »

(JTA) — An Israeli fashion model said that she was denied a job offer from a Lebanon-born French designer because of her nationality. Arbel Kynan told At magazine in Israel earlier this week that Maison Rabih Kayrouz cancelled a gig that had been lined up for her at Paris… Read more »

(JTA) — A New Jersey pizzeria has fired the manager accused of sending anti-Semitic text messages to a teenage employee after he asked to take off for a Jewish holiday. The family that owns Maurizio’s Pizzeria & Italian Ristorante in Eatontown, New Jersey, also has apologized to the teen… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) –Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin about regional developments and about the case of an American-Israeli woman jailed for drug smuggling. “The conversation was warm and to the point and strengthened the Prime Minister’s optimism that the issue of the… Read more »

(JTA) — A Florida man who has presented himself as a child Holocaust survivor has withdrawn as a plaintiff in a trial against a former Nazi concentration camp guard. Moshe Peter Loth made headlines in November when he hugged defendant Bruno Dey during his trial in Hamburg, Germany. Loth has… Read more »

(JTA) — A man sprayed a swastika and racial epithets on the stairs and front door of a synagogue in Lincoln, Nebraska, then took a picture of his vandalism. The graffiti discovered on Wednesday morning on the South Street Temple was drawn in orange spray-paint, KOLN’s 1011 NOW news… Read more »

(JTA) — The Jewish mayor of a Los Angeles suburb has ordered a local condo owner to remove material posted on his balcony that includes swastikas and threats against the president. “This type of material and language has no place in our community and we are working tirelessly to… Read more »

(JTA) – Police in the northeast Italian city of Trieste analyzed security videos to identify and arrest a man suspected of vandalizing the city’s synagogue twice in the past few months. The suspect was accused of breaking two windows “for the purposes of ethnic-religious hatred,” police said. A statement… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) – Over the past century, Jews have endured what filmmaker Yaron Zilberman calls a “trilogy of traumas”: the Holocaust, the Yom Kippur War and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The Israeli-American writer, director and producer has spent much of his career exploring these… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Vice President Mike Pence will attend a conference on the Holocaust in Israel. The White House announced Wednesday that Pence and his wife, Karen, would attend the Fifth World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, in Jerusalem on Jan. 23. This year’s conference coincides… Read more »

(JTA) — If synagogues hire armed guards, they should be trained police officers, a top Jewish security agency says in a new report. Armed congregants who are not law enforcement officers “are unlikely to have experience dealing with high-stress situations,” according to the report issued Wednesday by the Secure… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Donald Trump warned the three European parties to the Iran nuclear deal that he would impose high tariffs on automobile exports if they did not confront Iran over its increased uranium enrichment. The Washington Post on Wednesday reported the threat, which was made a week… Read more »