News

RICHMOND, Va. (JTA) — Hedy Lapkin’s boyfriend wanted to attend the pro-gun rally in this capital city, but she had reservations. “My boyfriend has a lot of guns,” Lapkin, 79, said of her 83-year-old boyfriend. “He said, ‘You want to go to the rally?’ I said, ‘Are you out… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested immunity in the three corruption cases against him — and now the Knesset will discuss. The Israeli parliament’s Arrangements Committee said on Tuesday that the House Committee will begin immunity hearings on Jan. 30, though a House Committee has yet to… Read more »

CHICAGO (JTA) — A group of longtime employees is taking ownership of Milt’s Barbecue for the Perplexed, the popular kosher restaurant here that has been donating its profits to support local charities for seven years. Within months of opening in 2013, Milt’s menu of home-smoked meats and barbecue dishes… Read more »

(JTA) — The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which preserves and promotes the study of Eastern European and Yiddish culture, has laid off four librarians to make up for a budget shortfall. The news was first reported by the Forward, which reported that the layoffs constitute the entire library staff.… Read more »

(JTA) — President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine extolled Israelis as a “united, strong, powerful” and “unique” people in his first interview for an Israeli publication. The Times of Israel published the interview with the Jewish Zelensky on Sunday ahead of his arrival in Israel to attend the World Holocaust… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Benny Gantz said that following national elections in March, he will work to establish Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley “in coordination with the international community.” “We would like to reiterate that the Jordan Valley serves as the eastern border of the State of Israel in… Read more »

(JTA) — Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is flying a yellow flag to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day at his official residence in in the capital of Belgrade. The flag, which bears a Star of David and the word “Jude,” is meant to evoke the yellow star badge that Jews were… Read more »

(JTA) — Children caused the vandalism of a Jewish cemetery in Slovakia, in which at least 20 headstones were damaged, not extremists as was originally suspected. The gravestones were pushed over, causing some to crack, in mid-December in the northern town of Rajec. Police in the Zilina Region announced… Read more »

(JTA) — A Jewish cemetery in northeastern Bulgaria was vandalized. Gravestones were pushed over and broken, and a fence around the cemetery was damaged, the Sofia Globe reported Thursday. Shoumen was home to a Jewish community during centuries of Ottoman rule. The Jewish cemetery in Shoumen dates from the… Read more »

BERLIN (JTA) – A Jewish man working as a driver for the German Chancellery in Berlin has reported being subjected to anti-Semitic harassment. An unnamed source told the daily Bild am Sonntag newspaper that the man, who comes from Lebanon and worked in the Chancellery’s motor pool, reported that… Read more »

(JTA) — The progressive NowThis news website removed a segment of a video in which a George Washington University student asserted that teenage Holocaust diarist Anne Frank did not die in a concentration camp. The six-minute video about President Donald Trump’s executive order signed last month that directs “robust”… Read more »

(JTA) — Gov. Brad Little of Idaho recognized the 125th anniversary of the founding of his state’s Jewish community. “We recognize the resilience of the Jewish community in the face of great adversity, and we stand in solidarity with our Jewish neighbors in opposition to all forms of hate… Read more »

(JTA) — Hank Azaria said he will no longer voice the character of Indian convenience store manager Apu on “The Simpsons.” Azaria has been the thickly accented caricatured voice of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, manager of the show’s Kwik-E-Mart convenience store, for 30 years. “All we know there is I won’t… Read more »

(JTA) — A Wisconsin man with Jordanian roots was arrested for vandalizing a synagogue as part of his involvement in a white supremacist and neo-Nazi hate group known as The Base. Yousef Barasneh, 22, was arrested Friday as part of a nationwide investigation into the extremist group. Six other… Read more »

(JTA) – A week before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Pope Francis renewed his condemnation of anti-Semitism, decrying its “barbaric resurgence.” Francis was addressing a delegation from the Simon Wiesenthal Center that met with him at the Vatican on Monday. International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed in Italy and throughout… Read more »

(JTA) — A transgender woman in England has given up her legal fight to see her five haredi Orthodox children. The woman has not seen the children, whom she fathered when she was living as a man, since leaving a haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, community in Manchester in 2015. At a… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Chief Rabbinate has officially recognized the Beta Israel Jewish community from Ethiopia as Jewish. The ruling issued in November, but first reported Sunday by the Kan national broadcaster, accepts the position of the late Sephardic chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who ruled in 1973 that the… Read more »

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) – Argentina’s new president will travel this week to Israel as his first official foreign visit. Alberto Fernandez, who was sworn in as president last month, is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Tuesday to participate in the Fifth World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem,… Read more »

(JTA) — In a survey about anti-Semitism in France, nearly a quarter of 1,027 Jewish respondents said they had experienced a physical anti-Semitic assault. The results of the survey, carried out this year by the IFOP for the American Jewish Committee, were published Tuesday in Le Parisien. In addition… Read more »

(JTA) — Donald Trump Jr., son of the president, said he has met Lev Parnas and said he thought the Ukrainian-American businessman was Israeli. Trump Jr. told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that he and his father took photos with Parnas at political fundraising events, but that is… Read more »