A Palestinian policeman in the West Bank city of Ramallah standing next ot a poster with a slogan protesting the upcoming visit of President Obama, March 12, 2013. (Issam Rimawi/FLASH90/JTA) TEL AVIV (JTA) — When President Obama visits Israel next week, Gavriel Yaakov wants him to jump-start the peace process. “I’m excited,” said Yaakov, 67, sitting in a Tel Aviv mall. “I want negotiations to get to an agreement on a long-term peace with the Palestinians.” Yaakov said he… Read more »
The Lautenberg Amendment paved the way for these Iranian Jews shown arriving at Kennedy Airport in New York in 1995 to come to the United States. (Courtesy HIAS) WASHINGTON (JTA) – When the Lautenberg Amendment was introduced in 1990, it provided a mechanism for hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews to exit their crumbling country and immigrate to freedom in the United States. Since 2004, it has served as a lifeline for religious minorities fleeing the Islamic… Read more »
President Barack Obama, left, talking with Chief of Staff Jack Lew, center, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as they walk on the colonnade of the White House, shortly before the president announced Lew as hs nominee to replace Geithner as treasury secretary, Jan. 10, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Obama believes prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace are “bleak,” but he still will urge both sides to avoid unilateral actions that might further damage a process he hopes will be back on track within a year. That was the message Obama delivered Thursday in a meeting… Read more »
Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has been a prime figure in negotiations to avoid the sequester, which pro-Israel advocates worry could imperil the security of the Jewish state. (Courtesy AIPAC) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Imminent threats threading through the rhetoric at AIPAC conferences is hardly new, but this year’s alarm raising had a unique wrinkle: In addition to the prospect of a nuclear Iran, the other danger targeted by the pro-Israel lobby was domestic — sequestration. The message hammered home… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, shown addressing the AIPAC policy conference in Washington in March 2012, will present a video message to this year's confab. (Robert J. Saferstein) WASHINGTON (JTA) – This week’s annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington may be as notable for what — and who — is missing as what’s planned. For the first time in at least seven years, neither the U.S. president nor the Israeli prime minister will attend. In addition, for… Read more »
Israeli singer Rami Feinstein singing "Something Amazing," about his mall-working experience. (YouTube) NEW YORK (JTA) — In 2006, aspiring Israeli singer Rami Feinstein faced a big-time dilemma: Would he sign a 19-year contract with a top talent agent and relinquish 45 percent of his future profits, or take a job selling cosmetics at an American shopping mall? Feinstein took the job at… Read more »
At Mazel Academy in Brooklyn, Torah scrolls were unrolled to dry after being damaged by the floodwaters from superstorm Sandy, Oct. 31, 2012. (Ben Harris/JTA) WASHINGTON (JTA) — How essential is a house of worship to a neighborhood? That’s the crux of a question now exercising Congress as a bill advances that would provide direct relief to synagogues and churches damaged by superstorm Sandy last October. The bill, which passed the U.S. House of… Read more »
Nick Muzin, left, consulting with then-Rep. Tim Scott at a forum in Charleston, S.C., hosted by Scott for Republican presidential candidates, August 2011. (Photo by Kay Fekete, courtesy of Nick Muzin) WASHINGTON (JTA) – On a Saturday night following Shabbat, Nick Muzin arrayed on his dining room table what would turn out to be the winning strategy to elect the first black Republican to Congress from South Carolina in more than a century. The next night at the same table… Read more »
President Obama, shown visiting the Western Wall in July 2008, when he was a presidential candidate. (Photo: Avi Hayon/Flash 90/JTA) Is President Obama’s plan to visit Israel a sign that he’s ready to take another shot at Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking? The White House announced Tuesday that Obama would visit Israel in the spring, his first trip there as president. He did visit in 2008, when he was a candidate for… Read more »
Even in his late 80s, political endorsements from Ed Koch, who served as New York City's mayor from 1978 to 1989, were prized. He appeared in this 2012 video supporting President Obama's bid for reelection. (Obama Campaign/YouTube)
NEW YORK (JTA) — One of the proudest moments of Ed Koch’s life came during a trip to Israel in 1990, in the midst of the first Palestinian intifada. Koch had recently left City Hall after 12 years as mayor of New York City and was touring Jerusalem when… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Preaching to a preacher man — or woman — doesn’t always play out as planned. That’s the lesson learned this week by officials at the National Cathedral after several clergy, including three rabbis, made impromptu changes to the readings they were given to deliver at a… Read more »
President Obama speaks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following their meetings on May 20, 2011. (White House /Pete Souza) WASHINGTON (JTA) — With the Israeli election results split evenly between the right-wing bloc and everyone else, no one in Washington is ready to stake their reputation on what the outcome means for the U.S.-Israel relationship and the Middle East. Except for this: The next Israeli government likely will… Read more »
Rabbi Julie Schonfeld reads a psalm at the presidential inaugural service at the National Cathedral in Washington, Jan. 22, 2013. (Ron Kampeas/JTA) WASHINGTON (JTA) — The inaugural poem included a “shalom,” and three rabbis and a cantor attended the traditional next-day inaugural blessing. But the message that Jewish Democrats were most eager to convey during President Obama’s second inauguration on Jan. 21 was that the long romance between the community and… Read more »
President Obama speaks with Jacob Lew on the Colonnade of the White House in 2010. Lew was nominated as Treasury secretary on Jan. 10, 2013. (Official White House Photo) WASHINGTON (JTA) – Jacob Lew helped Orthodox observance reach the highest precincts of governance. But can a man that Republicans say “can’t get to yes” be confirmed as secretary of the Treasury? President Obama on Thursday nominated Lew, his chief of staff, to the post on Thursday, replacing Timothy… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, launched a gun control initiative on the second anniversary of the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson. “I was shot in the head while meeting with constituents two years ago today,” Giffords wrote with Kelly, an ex-astronaut, in… Read more »
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, left, and potential successor Chuck Hagel listening as President Obama announces at the White House that he is nominating Hagel for the defense post, Jan. 7, 2013. (DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Now that Chuck Hagel is officially President Obama’s nominee to be secretary of defense, Jewish groups concerned about Hagel’s record on Israel and Iran are faced with a choice. Do they fight hard to derail his nomination, joining common cause with Republican opponents? Or do they… Read more »
Reform leader Rabbi Rick Jacobs, shown speaking at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Jerusalem in November 2012, co-authored a letter to President Obama on eschewing action against the Palestinians that would damage efforts to renew peace talks. (Robert A. Cumins/JFNA) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Two major Jewish groups are at odds over the prospect of penalties for the Palestinians in the wake of their enhanced U.N. status. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee in recent weeks has backed two congressional bids to at least shut down the Palestine Liberation Organization… Read more »
A man taking target practice at a shooting range in Arizona. (Courtesy STA Training) NEW YORK (JTA) — The day Eric Schaefer learned that a .233 caliber semiautomatic Bushmaster rifle — a type of weapon he owned — was used to kill 26 people in Newtown, Conn., he sold his rifle to local law enforcement near his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. Schaefer, a… Read more »
Congressional Democrats join Bend the Arc to lobby on Capitol Hill for a tax hike on those with annual incomes of $250,000 or more, Dec. 20, 2012. (Courtesy Bend the Arc) WASHINGTON (JTA) — What will be cut? And who will pay? These are the two facets of the “fiscal cliff” debate in Washington, as President Obama and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives wrangle over what mix of cuts and revenue increases should be part of a deficit reduction… Read more »
Sen. John Kerry, pictured here addressing troops in Afghanistan in 2011, was nominated for U.S. secretary of state on Dec. 21, 2012. (U.S. Embassy, Kabul, Afghanistan) WASHINGTON (JTA) — On a wintry day at a small Iowa shul in November of 2003, John Kerry got all verklempt. The man whose opponents had taken to depicting as aloof and patrician, whose campaign for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination had been all but written off by that… Read more »
