News

With White House set to approve Iran deal, options to shape outcome remote

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), left, shakes hands with ranking member Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) during a committee markup meeting on the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran on April 14, 2015. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
May 14, 2015 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) – The Iran deal may not be done, but bids by its opponents to shape it are all but buried. Skeptics of the nuclear negotiations have all but given up on a congressional role before the June 30 deadline for an agreement between Iran and the major… Read more »

In Arab-Israeli city, a women’s party is challenging the status quo
May 12, 2015 / Ben Sales, JTA

TAIBEH, Israel (JTA) — To get to her assigned kindergarten, Biyan Azam, then 5, would have had to walk alone through a bustling commercial district and cross a busy intersection. This Arab-Israeli city does not provide school buses and would not transfer Biyan to a school nearer to her home here.… Read more »

Israeli Air Force, particularly its scrappy beginnings, inspires 3 films

Al Schwimmer, who guided the vast operation to build Israel's air force, with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. (Courtesy of Boaz Dvir)
May 12, 2015 / Tom Tugend, JTA

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — The Israeli Air Force is getting its moment in the spotlight, with two documentaries airing on television stations and at film festivals, while a feature movie waits in the, ahem, wings. The focus of the films is not on today’s highly professional IAF or its astonishing… Read more »

1 in 6 Jews are new to Judaism – and 9 other new Pew findings
May 12, 2015 / Uriel Heilman, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) – The Pew Research Center’s newly released 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study offers a trove of data on American Jews based on interviews with 35,071 American adults, 847 of whom identified their faith as Jewish. Here are some of the more interesting findings about the Jews. … Read more »

For Netanyahu and Obama, mistrust is personal — and cynical
May 12, 2015 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Obama administration officials have long contended that the friction between the U.S. president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not personal and that American support for Israel remains as robust as ever — and arguably even more robust by some metrics. But a year of… Read more »

Back in power, haredi parties aim to roll back religious reforms
May 11, 2015 / Ben Sales, JTA

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Israel’s last governing coalition — divided on war, peace and economics — did agree on one thing: Israel’s religious policies needed to change. Now it appears that the incoming coalition will be organized around the opposite principle: Those changes must end. A coalition agreement signed… Read more »

Amid Chinese influx, Brandeis considers its Jewish identity

Brandeis Asian Club: A project of the Brandeis Asian American Student Association aims to raise awareness about sterotyping at Brandeis. (Uriel Heilman)
May 11, 2015 / Uriel Heilman, JTA

WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA) – When Jeff Wang was applying to U.S. colleges more than two years ago from his home near Shanghai, Brandeis University was a top choice. Like many Chinese students now at Brandeis, he had discovered the university on Chinese Internet forums that touted the school’s academic rankings and its… Read more »

In S. Carolina, kosher-vegetarian dining hall seeks to bring diverse populations to the table

Dara Rosenblatt, Jewish sudent life program coordinator at the College of Charleston, at an Israel fest celebration on campus, April 23, 2015. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)
May 11, 2015 / Ruth Ellen Gruber, JTA

CHARLESTON, S.C. (JTA) – Renowned for its gracious architecture and signature Southern charm, Charleston is increasingly celebrated as a foodie heaven. The trouble is, in a city whose culinary specialties embrace (and glorify) oysters, she-crab soup, and shrimp and grits, the burgeoning restaurant scene is nearly off limits to… Read more »

At JTS, Cardinal Dolan says Catholic-Jewish relations are strong
May 8, 2015 /

NEW YORK (JTA) — A half-century ago this year, the Catholic Church issued a landmark document that decried anti-Semitism and asserted that Jews could not be blamed for killing Jesus. The effect: Long-fraught relations between Catholics and Jews were dramatically improved. To mark 50 years since the detente, New… Read more »

It’s complicated: Germany and Israel mark golden anniversary as friends

German Chancellor Angela Merkel received the Presidential Medal, Israel's highest honor, from then-President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, Feb. 25, 2014. (Ilia Yeflimovich/Getty Images)
May 8, 2015 / Toby Axelrod, JTA

BERLIN (JTA) — This month marks 50 years since Israel and West Germany established diplomatic ties. It has been an understandably complex relationship, launched two decades after the Holocaust ended and 14 years after West Germany committed to reparations “both moral and material” for the genocide committed by the… Read more »

Can Netanyahu make new narrow coalition work?

Jewish Home's Ayelet shaked discussing budgets for Israeli settlements at a meeting of the State Control Committee at the Knesset in Jerusalem, Nov. 10, 2014. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
May 8, 2015 / Ben Sales, JTA

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Seven weeks after he won reelection, Benjamin Netanyahu finally secured a fourth term as prime minister. With 90 minutes to go until a Wednesday night deadline to form a governing coalition, Netanyahu concluded an agreement with the religious, pro-settler Jewish Home party that gives him… Read more »

Pinning of yellow star on 3-year-old reignites Israeli education debate
May 6, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

(JTA) — On April 19, Keren Zachmi’s daughter returned from her kindergarten near Tel Aviv wearing a yellow patch emblazoned with the word “Jude.” A teacher had put the yellow star on 17 kindergarteners so they would feel like Holocaust victims during Yom Hashoah, Israel’s national Holocaust commemoration day. Appalled,… Read more »

Where is the Jewish aid to Nepal going?

Israeli soldiers establish a field hospital together with the Nepalese army on April 29 in Nepal. (IDF Spokesperson/ Flash90)
May 6, 2015 / Uriel Heilman, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) – Almost as soon as news of Nepal’s devastating earthquake reached the wider world, Jewish aid groups began mobilizing humanitarian efforts to help the victims. In Israel, that meant dispatching first responders to Nepal; in America, it mostly meant raising and allocating money. How is the… Read more »

How Jews are trying to make things better after Baltimore

Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism legislative assistants at a rally May 1 in Baltimore. (Courtesy of Religious Action Center)
May 6, 2015 / Ron Kampeas and Melissa Apter, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) – From roundtable discussions to protests and prayers to candid talk with law enforcement officials, American Jewish communities are joining in the debate about community policing in the wake of several high-profile deaths of unarmed black men while in police custody. Officials were short on specifics, but… Read more »

Why Ethiopian-Israelis took to Tel Aviv’s streets

Israeli policeman trying to disperse the hundreds of demonstrators in Tel Aviv protesting on behalf of Ethiopian-Israelis, May 3, 2015. (Ben Kelmer/Flash90)
May 4, 2015 / Ben Sales, JTA

TEL AVIV (JTA) — A historically disadvantaged black minority is galvanized when one of its members appears to suffer brutality at the hands of police — and the episode is caught on video. Peaceful mass protests devolve into violence. Police crack down in an attempt to control crowds. It’s… Read more »

In time for Mother’s Day, ‘Heather Has Two Mommies’ author celebrates book’s 25th birthday

The book jacket of the new edition of"Heather Has Two Mommies," which features new color illustrations by Laura Cornell. (Courtesy of Candlewick Press)
May 4, 2015 / Judy Bolton-Fasman, JTA

(JTA) — Leslea Newman’s iconic picture book “Heather Has Two Mommies” had a simple beginning. A woman approached Newman on the street in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she lived at the time, and said her family needed a book to which her daughter could relate. Meaning that she wanted to… Read more »

Op-Ed: What a biblical tale of rape can teach us about Baltimore riots

Protesters marching in Baltimore following the announcement that six city police officers would be indicted in the death of Freddie Gray, May 2, 2015. (Andrew Burton.Getty Images)
May 4, 2015 / Avraham Bronstein, JTA

GREAT NECK, N.Y. (JTA) — From 2011 through 2014, the City of Baltimore paid nearly $6 million in over 100 judgments and settlements relating to false arrests, unlawful imprisonment and police brutality. Once the justice system takes its course, the family of Freddie Gray may well be added to… Read more »

Jewish-Latino Teen Coalition showcases multiculturalism — at home and in D.C.

Members of Tucson’s Jewish-Latino Teen Coalition meet with Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) at his office in Washington, D.C. (L-R) Zakkai Markowitz, Josh McKenna, Ryan Green, Alan Parra, Jared Friedman, Flake, Aida Flores, Itzel Herrera, Audrey Powers, Dominick Montes (Lisa Kondrat)
April 30, 2015 / Sheila Wilensky, AJP Associate Editor

When a group of nine Jewish and Latino teens traveled to Washington, D.C. last month it wasn’t just to see the sights — unless that included visiting congressional offices. Members of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Jewish-Latino Teen Coalition made the trip cross-country to lobby for immigration reform,… Read more »

Jewish Agency exec sees resources but no ‘silver bullet’ for Jewish continuity

Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Board Chair Kathryn L. Unger and Jewish Agency for Israel President and CEO for International Development Misha Galperin at a JFSA council meeting April 22 at the Tucson Jewish Community Center
April 30, 2015 / Phyllis Braun, AJP Executive Editor

For the last five years, Misha Galperin, Ph.D., has traveled the world on behalf of the Jewish Agency for Israel, where he has been president and CEO for international development. Even before that, while pursuing a career as a psychologist in New York City, he volunteered with the New… Read more »