News

Terror strikes Tel Aviv: Four Israelis killed in shooting attack

Tel Aviv (TPS) – Two Palestinian gunmen in suits opened fire on a crowd of shoppers and diners in Tel Aviv’s central Sarona Market shortly after 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, killing at least four victims. “What we know so far is that two terrorists arrived at the Sarona compound while shooting at… Read more »

Breaking: 3 dead in terror attack in Tel Aviv

A mass shooting terror attack occurred in the center of Tel Aviv shortly after 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, claiming the lives of at least three victims. According to Magen David Adom (MDA), at least nine individuals have been injured in several locations surrounding Tel Aviv’s trendy Sarona Market. “MDA… Read more »

In Krakow, Night of the Synagogues bolsters Jewish pride

Young visitors entering the Isaak Jakubowicz Synagogue in Krakow during the Night of the Synagogues in the wee hours of the morning, June 5, 2016. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) – For the sixth year in a row, the seven synagogues in Krakow’s historic Jewish district, Kazimierz, opened their doors for 7@Nite – or the Night of the Synagogues, a one-night mini-festival aimed at bolstering Jewish pride and promoting Jewish awareness among the public. Each synagogue –… Read more »

For Israel and the Palestinians, the peace plans just keep coming

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, looks on at the international summit in Paris to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, June 3, 2016. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Here a plan, there a plan, everywhere a peace plan. Conditions in Israel and the Palestinian Authority may not exactly seem conducive topeace — Israel just formed what may be its most right-wing government ever, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is aging and becoming less popular. Yet peace plans… Read more »

In remote Madagascar, a new community chooses to be Jewish

The conversion process included full body immersions in a river located a 90-minute drive away from Antananarivo, Madagascar's capital. (Deborah Josefson)

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (JTA) — A nascent Jewish community was officially born in Madagascar last month when 121 men, women and children underwent Orthodox conversions on the remote Indian Ocean island nation better known for lemurs, chameleons, dense rain forests and vanilla. The conversions, which took place over a 10-day… Read more »

Israel is now the land of milk and whiskey

The Golan Heights Distillery is the first whiskey to be bottled and sold in Israel. (Courtesy of the Golan Heights Distillery)

KATZRIN, Israel (JTA) — David Zibell is busy testing the alcohol level of the liquid flowing out of his outdoor copper still. Then, touching his head to ensure his kippah is in place, he heads inside to carefully place labels on the whiskey bottles lined up inside his distillery.… Read more »

At 25, he’s trying to take down a New Jersey political ‘machine’ and become the youngest person in Congress

Alex Law left his job as an IBM consultant over a year ago to run for a House seat against a formidable incumbent. (Courtesy of the Law campaign)

(JTA) — Alex Law is not your typical Jewish 25-year-old Bernie Sanders supporter. Instead of simply posting tweets with the hashtag #feelthebern or attending campaign rallies, the Collingswood, New Jersey, resident is running to be Sanders’ colleague in Congress. The aptly named Law, who if elected would become the… Read more »

Donald Trump’s anti-Semitism controversies: A timeline

NEW YORK (JTA) – Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is facing growing accusations that his campaign is countenancing anti-Semitism – if not encouraging it outright. Trump’s foreign policy slogan, “America First,” echoes the World War II-era noninterventionist movement championed by a notorious anti-Semite. During the height of the… Read more »

Israel takes anti-boycott fight to halls of United Nations

The United Nations hosted an anti-BDS summit at its New York City headquarters, May 31, 2016. (Shahar Azran)

UNITED NATIONS (JTA) – It was an incongruous sight: The U.N. General Assembly hall filled to capacity with 1,500 cheering people waving miniature Israeli flags and singing “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem. No, hell hadn’t frozen over. The occasion was a one-day conference hosted by Israel’s U.N. mission devoted to… Read more »

Liberal Jews plan a summer of opposing Donald Trump

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaking at a news conference at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, D.C., March 21, 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Boycott Trump? Mock Trump? Trump, the musical? Jewish liberals are ready to sow a summer of Donald Trump discontent in ways that aim both to bludgeon and entertain. Bend the Arc, an advocacy group, is convening its first national conference here next week aimed in part at… Read more »

Holocaust survivor race walks 80 km on 80th birthday

Shaul Ladany, who represented Israel in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics, practices his race walking on March 21. (Photo: Dani Machlis/Ben Gurion University)

Israeli race-walking champion, academic and Holocaust survivor Shaul Ladany celebrated his 80th birthday on April 1 by walking nonstop for 80 kilometers, one kilometer for every year of his life — almost 50 miles. Ladany walked a circular track on the streets of his home community of Omer, near… Read more »

On Adventure Bus, memory takes back seat to experience

Handmaker Advventure Bus participants and volunteers listen to a docent at DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun, May 6. (Angela Salmon/Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging)

Angela Salmon, a program coordinator at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging, doesn’t mind if her clients don’t always remember her name. She doesn’t mind if they sometimes have to search for the right words. When she and her clients are together on the Adventure Bus, a program for… Read more »

Emanu-El debuting ‘Hebrew@Home’ remote learning

Rabbi Batsheva Appel, center, shown repairing a Torah with students in January 2014, says distance learners will be in the physical classroom one day a week to preserve a sense of community. (Courtesy Temple Emanu-El)

Temple Emanu-El’s Kurn Religious School will implement a new distance learning strategy to increase Hebrew school engagement in the upcoming academic year. Called Hebrew@Home, it will allow students in third through eighth grades who live in remote locations or cannot make it to the school for other reasons to… Read more »

Pro-Israel heavyweights press hard for 2 states

President Barack Obama sits next to Alan Solow at a meeting with Jewish leaders at the White House, March 1, 2011. (Pete Souza/White House)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In a rare and sharp split with Israeli government policy, a group of Jewish community leaders want to get a proposal for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the next president’s desk. Two complementary U.S. and Israeli working papers to be launched next week propose… Read more »

Programs in Tucson, Israel to receive more than $325K from JCF and JFSA grants

On July 1, 20 nonprofit organizations will receive the first payments of grants totaling $328,335 from the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona’s competitive community grants process. Funding focused on three areas: Tucson Jewish Community, Israel and Global Jewry, and Tucson General Community. New this year were Synagogue Small… Read more »

Israeli teen emissaries to be newest link in Tucson-Israel chain

Under the auspices of the Weintraub Israel Center, Leah Avuno and Bar Alkaher, Israeli teen emissaries who will arrive in Tucson in August, hold a Skype conference with local Jewish educators. The teens are known as “Shinshinim,” from the Hebrew letter “shin’’ that starts each word in the program’s Hebrew title, “Shnat Sherut Shlishit” (third year of service). (Courtesy Weintraub Israel Center)

A year of service will soon begin for two Israeli teens and their work will bring them here to Tucson. Leah Genei Avuno, 17, of Kiryat Malachi and Bar Alkaher, 17, of Shimshit will arrive here at the beginning of August and they cannot wait to dig in. They are… Read more »

How the 2016 election is upending pro-Israel orthodoxies

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaking at a news conference at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, D.C, March 21, 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – When it comes to Israel, Democrats and Republicans simply do not see eye to eye, and for all their love of Zion, evangelicals will turn out for a candidate who is less than 100 percent on the issue. Welcome to the 2016 presidential election, when the… Read more »

Fearful for economic future, Israelis want Scandinavian-style government, survey shows

Young Israelis living on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv in protest of high housing prices, Aug. 10, 2011. (Liron Almog/Flash90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — On one hand, most Israelis say their financial situation is good and getting better. On the other hand, they’re worried they won’t be able to provide for their children. On one hand, they want significantly more government spending in a wide range of public services.… Read more »

New stage for Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick: The Knesset

On a tour of the Temple Mount, Yehuda Glick shows religious Jews a diagram of the Jewish temple that once stood where the golden Dome of the Rock stands today in Jerusalem, Sept. 17, 2013. (Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — A year and a half ago he was a fringe Temple Mount activist expected to die, the victim of a point-blank assassination attempt. This week he will enter the Knesset, the ruling Likud party’s replacement legislator for outgoing Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon. Yehuda Glick’s journey —… Read more »