Sol Factor, who was given up by a mother who was in a displaced persons' camp, is looking for information about his family tree. (Courtesy Sol Factor) The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — Sol Factor recalls a happy childhood in circa-1950s Boston suburbia with his physician-father Joseph, teacher-mother Bernice and younger sister Rachel. His first life, as Meier Pollak — born in 1946 near a displaced persons’… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is waiting and watching when it comes to Iran — although for how long, no one knows. Analysts and Jewish organizational officials who speak with Israeli and U.S. government say Netanyahu came away from his meeting last week with President Obama… Read more »
(N.Y. Jewish Week) — The recent celebration of Purim offers an appropriate moment to recall a man known for a time as “America’s Haman.” That Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s story ended very differently than the story of Haman in the Book of Esther reminds us how America itself is… Read more »
New Jersey native hopes to sled for Israel at Olympics (Ken Childs) Meet Bradley Chalupski, Israel’s best hope for a medal on the bobsled track at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in 2014. Chalupski is an unlikely Israeli athlete. For one thing, he competes in skeleton, a sport that’s virtually unknown in Israel — not to mention the rest of… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama meet in the White House Oval Office to talk about Iran and other issues, March 5, 2012. (Ron Kampeas) President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agree, at least in principle: Keep the talk on what to do about Iran behind closed doors. But once they’re behind those doors, they can’t agree — and they can’t seem to resist bringing their disagreements into the open. Within hours… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama meet in the White House Oval Office to talk about Iran and other issues, March 5, 2012. (Ron Kampeas) WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may not have bridged their differences on how to deal with Iran, but each managed to give the other a measure of reassurance. In his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Obama held his ground, declining… Read more »
State Treasurer Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio, is shown during his service as a Marine in Iraq. (Citizens for Josh Mandel) WASHINGTON (JTA) — As the 2012 campaign heats up in Ohio, Republicans are pinning their hopes on a young Jewish military veteran to unseat Democratic incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown. Josh Mandel, a 34-year-old U.S. Marine Corps veteran and the current state treasurer, has faced a number of challenges but… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Famed attorney Alan Dershowitz, former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel — three prominent Jewish activists who have joined with other prominent people in a bid to remove a group with a blood-soaked history from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — In advance of Super Tuesday, JTA takes a look at the stances of the four Republican presidential candidates on some issues of Jewish interest. The candidates are listed in alphabetical order. ABORTION Newt Gingrich: Has said that abortion should not be legal, though he makes… Read more »
Chris Cole, coach of the boys basketball team at the Robert M. Beren Academy in Houston, offering up some strategy for his squad. (Samantha Steinberg) NEW YORK (JTA) — Chris Cole, the coach of the boys’ basketball team at the Robert M. Beren Academy in Houston, says his squad is peaking coming off its 27-point victory in the state tournament quarterfinals. Apparently the Stars, who with a record of 24-5 are having the best… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, shown at a September 2011 meeting at the United Nations in New York, are likely to meet again in Washington at the beginning of March, when decisions on Iran will be coming to a head. (Avi Ohayan/GPO/FLASH90) WASHINGTON (JTA) — There will be the speeches, and they will resound like an echo. And then there will be the talk. When President Obama speaks on March 4 to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the group the following day,… Read more »
Jewish backers of Rick Santorum, shown speaking at an Arizona Republican Party fundraiser in Phoenix on Feb. 21, 2012, say Jewish voters should look past his hard-line social conservatisim and consider his message on the economy and on Israel. (Gage Skidmore via Creative Commons) WASHINGTON (JTA) — If Rick Santorum secures the Republican nomination, expect to hear this mantra from his Jewish supporters: In times of crisis, social issues don’t matter. The former Pennsylvania senator, who is leading in national polls in the race for the GOP presidential nod, is fiercely anti-abortion and… Read more »
Alan and Judy Gross at the Western Wall in the spring of 2005. (Courtesy of the Gross family) WASHINGTON (JTA) – For the Jews of Cuba, it was the ultimate Internet connection. The high-tech equipment that U.S. contractor Alan Gross brought with him to Cuba in 2009 to help connect local Jews to the Internet reportedly included a SIM card that makes it almost impossible to track… Read more »
Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi presents Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a plaque, August 2011. (The Israel Project) NEW YORK (JTA) — Here’s what the international Jewish media conspiracy looks like: Two men and four women, all clad in dark suits, sitting around a table in a windowless conference room in a nondescript office in midtown Manhattan. Together they run a global organization stretching from Washington to… Read more »
Protesters in the aftermath of deadly riots march in Cairo on Feb. 3, 2012. The increasing chaos in Egypt, including the recent arrest of U.S. democracy activists, has raised questions about it factors into U.S. and Israel security considerations in the region. (Gigi Ibrahim via CC) WASHINGTON (JTA) — The future of a key pillar of Israeli security could rest with the fate of a few dozen pro-democracy activists in Egypt. After Egyptian authorities filed charges on Feb. 6 against 43 American and other foreign pro-democracy activists who worked in the country, leading members of… Read more »
Sen. Lindsey Graham, shown attending Independence Day celebrations at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in July 2011, has authored a resolution that would make an Iranian nuclear capability a "red line." (Courtesy U.S. Embassy, Kabul) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Is America’s red line on Iran moving? A new bipartisan resolution introduced Thursday on Capitol Hill is part of a growing effort to shift the longstanding U.S. red line from Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon to having the capability to build one. Such a shift would… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — What were the Jews doing becoming so involved in a debate over contraception? It was a question that more than one Jewish official asked themselves over recent months as tensions between the Obama administration and leaders of the Catholic Church rose to the boiling point over… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama meet at the United Nations in New York, Sept. 21, 2011. (Avi Ohayon/GPO/Flash90) It’s one of those coincidences too tempting to believe is a coincidence. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is delivering a speech to AIPAC about what should happen next with Iran and likely meeting with President Obama to discuss Iran options on the same day that the International Atomic Energy… Read more »
Alan Dershowitz, right, speaking at the University of Pennsylvania in a bid to galvanize pro-Israel students there, Feb. 2, in light of the expected anti-Israel message expected at the BDS conference on the Penn campus. Political journalist Robert Traynham served as the moderator for the program. (Scott Weiner) (Jewish Exponent) — Did the National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Conference at the University of Pennsylvania over the weekend backfire for organizers and illustrate the strength of the pro-Israel community on campus? Or did BDS speakers like Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah reveal how much pro-Israel students need to… Read more »
(Jewish Ideas Daily) — News flash: Top-secret intelligence memos written during the last years of the Bush administration describe covert activities — in intelligence parlance, a “false flag” operation — by Israeli Mossad officers, posing as American CIA agents, who recruited assassins from Jundallah, an obscure Pakistan-based Sunni Muslim… Read more »
