News

(JTA) — Charter school supporters in Los Angeles are targeting a Jewish school board member with attack mailers that some critics have called anti-Semitic. The mailers portray Scott Schmerelson as greedy, corrupt and determined to score fast cash by exposing children to deadly vaping and McDonald’s French fries, the… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Five years ago this week, Amos Geva took an EasyJet flight from Berlin to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport for a very short visit home. On his agenda: dinner with his family, a trip to the ballot box and media interviews about his efforts to encourage Israeli… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that same-sex couples and single men should be eligible for surrogacy in the country, saying its surrogacy law now is discriminatory. The court gave the government one year to change the law, Ynet reported. The laws “disproportionately harm the right to… Read more »

(JTA) — Facebook removed 30 fake accounts that were designed to keep Arab Israelis from voting in next week’s national elections. The Arabic-language accounts were uncovered by the nonprofit organization Democratic Bloc and were confirmed removed on Tuesday, Haaretz reported. The pages encouraged the Arab community to boycott the March… Read more »

(JTA) — Answering criticism of a float that depicted Holocaust victims dancing with Nazis alongside crematoria, the Spanish town that hosted the parade said the display was allowed only because its creators had described it as a form of commemoration. The municipality of Campo de Criptana offered the explanation… Read more »

(JTA) — A bill that would allow the Bible to be taught as an elective in West Virginia public schools passed in the state legislature over the objections of a Jewish third-grader who testified that the measure was a “bad idea.” The measure would allow social studies courses on… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — As the coronovirus spread worldwide, Israel’s Health Ministry called on Israelis to refrain from unnecessary travel abroad and said that any Israeli returning from Italy must self-quarantine for two weeks. On Thursday, the Health Ministry announced that an Israeli man who returned from Italy earlier this… Read more »

(JTA) — Democratic presidential candidates Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg said they will not attend AIPAC’s annual conference because it overlaps with Super Tuesday. Their absence leaves former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg as the only Democratic candidate to confirm that he will speak at the prominent Israel lobby’s… Read more »

(JTA) — Domestic extremists in the United States — most them from the far-right — killed 435 people in the decade that ended this past December. According to a new study by the Anti-Defamation League, half of those murders were committed to further the killer’s ideology. The other half… Read more »

REISTERSTOWN, Md. (JTA) — When Sarah Julia Seldin arrived at the main national gathering of Jewish foodies in 2016, she was disappointed to find no programming aimed specifically at people like her. There were sessions on kosher cooking, Jewish food ethics and the realities of kosher animal slaughter. But… Read more »

JERSEY CITY, N.J. (JTA) — Two months after his wife was murdered in the attack on this city’s only kosher grocery store, owner Moshe Ferencz was back behind the counter this week. The store, which has partially reopened in a new location, still doesn’t have regular hours. But the reopening… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Instead of trying to bring peace to the Middle East, former Trump administration envoy Jason Greenblatt will now try to bring investments. Greenblatt will join the global venture investments platform OurCrowd as a partner with responsibility for building ties in the region, the company announced Wednesday.… Read more »

(JTA) — The most seriously injured victim of the stabbing attack at a rabbi’s home in Monsey opened his eyes after 59 days in a coma. Josef Neumann, 72, has been on a respirator since the Dec. 28 attack during a Hanukkah party. He was one of five people… Read more »

(JTA) — Two volleyball players from Brooklyn College took a knee during the playing of “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem, before a match at Yeshiva University. The controversial protest gesture by Omar Rezika and Hunnan Butt was captured on video and posted on social media. “Brooklyn College strongly condemns all… Read more »

BOSTON (JTA) – Stephan Ross, a prominent Boston-area Holocaust survivor who founded the New England Holocaust Memorial, has died. Ross died Monday at the age of 88, though the destruction by the Nazis of documents in his native Poland makes it impossible to determine the exact year of his… Read more »

(JTA) — A drunken man broke into a synagogue in western Ukraine and assaulted a congregant after shouting about “beating up the kikes.” The incident occurred Tuesday in Vinnytsia, according to a Facebook post by Eduard Dolinsky, the director of Ukraine’s Jewish Committee. The man, who was identified by… Read more »

(JTA) — A Jewish student in Texas was kicked off his high school’s robotics team after he made an anti-Semitic joke at his own expense. The student filed a federal lawsuit against Anderson High School in Austin, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. According to the lawsuit, the student found… Read more »

(JTA) — Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg will speak at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, the first U.S. presidential candidate to be confirmed as a speaker. Bloomberg’s participation in the conference, being held March 1-3 in Washington, D.C., was announced by AIPAC on Tuesday evening, just… Read more »

AALST, Belgium (JTA) — I probably spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about the Holocaust. Partly as a consequence of covering Jewish news in Europe at a time of rising anti-Semitism, Holocaust associations often come to mind in my daily life — on crowded trains, for example. But… Read more »

PARIS (JTA) – A secret network of Jews influences global political and economic affairs. That’s the feeling among a fifth of the 16,000 respondents to a survey among Europeans from 16 countries. The same number also agreed with the statement that “Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own needs.”… Read more »