News

(JTA) — As votes were counted following last week’s election in Israel, many saw the results as a loss for longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After all, Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party won fewer seats than the Blue and White party of his main competitor Benny Gantz. So it came… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The prime minister of Malaysia defended his past anti-Semitic statements and questioned the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust in a speech at Columbia University. “I am exercising my right to free speech. Why is it that I can’t say something against the Jews,… Read more »

(JTA) – “Jew down” seems to be making a comeback — or maybe it never left the lexicon. In April, a City Council member uttered the term at a meeting in Jeffersonville, Indiana. This month, council members in two New Jersey cities — Paterson and Trenton — used it… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will get his second try this year to form Israel’s government after talks aimed at creating a unity government broke down. President Reuven Rivlin tasked Netanyahu with forming a government on Wednesday evening even though his Likud party did not finish first… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — The woman approached with trepidation, fidgeting and glancing nervously over her shoulder as she sat down in a coffee shop here. A Filipino caregiver who has been living in Israel without a visa for years, the woman said her home had been raided by Israeli… Read more »

(JTA) — In a first, Israel’s national baseball team has qualified for a spot in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The squad of mostly Jewish-American college players and some pros team defeated South Africa on Sunday in the Europe/Africa Qualifier tournament in Italy and finished the tournament with a record… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A woman has died nearly a year after suffering injuries in a rocket attack into southern Israel from Gaza. Nina Gisdenanova, 74, died last week at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, The Times of Israel reported Sunday. She was in an apartment building in… Read more »

(JTA) — Bulgaria’s Jewish community opened its first Jewish school in over 20 years. The opening last week of the Ronald S. Lauder Day School in Sofia is a significant development for the some 6,000 members of the Jewish minority in Bulgaria. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish… Read more »

(JTA) — A rabbi in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, is opening there what he says is the city’s first yeshiva, or Jewish religious seminary, since World War II. The Vilna Yeshiva will have about a dozen students when it opens this fall, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, the Chabad-Lubavitch… Read more »

(JTA) — A new board member of The Women’s March who has accused Israel of genocide and the FBI of recruiting for ISIS was voted off two days after she was appointed. “Zahra Billoo has been removed from board membership effective immediately,” the board posted Wednesday on Twitter. “We… Read more »

PITTSBURGH (JTA) — Our sages teach us that kol hatchalot kashot, all beginnings are difficult. This phrase feels especially resonant this Rosh Hashanah. The man who blew the shofar last year at my Pittsburgh synagogue, New Light, is not here to blow it now. He was murdered on Oct.… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Sitting at the front of a large room lined floor to ceiling with Jewish holy books, Rabbi Joseph Beyda’s voice broke as he processed, seemingly in real time, the idea that a trusted teacher had preyed on his students. “I think the overarching feeling of… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Arab Joint List recommended to Israel’s president that Blue and White head Benny Gantz be tapped to form the next government in order to end the political career of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ayman Odeh, who heads the coalition of four Arab parties, explained its… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Blue and White head Benny Gantz met with outgoing White House Middle East peace envoy Jason Greenblatt at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. The meeting on Monday afternoon also included the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman. Gantz’s party was the top vote-getter in Israel’s national… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A film about the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as seen through the eyes of his killer will be the country’s nomination for an Oscar. “Incitement” took the Ophir Award in Israel for best picture on Sunday night. The top prize at the Ophirs of… Read more »

BOSTON (JTA) — The grounds of a suburban Boston synagogue were vandalized. Congregants of Temple Sinai in Sharon, about 25 miles south of Boston, discovered graffiti of unidentifiable defacing symbols splashed over the large Star of David in the pavement near the synagogue’s front entryway as they arrived for… Read more »

(JTA) — Construction on the first official synagogue in the United Arab Emirates will begin in several months. The synagogue, slated to be completed by 2022, will be part of a multi-faith complex called the Abrahamic Family House in the capital Abu Dhabi, Reuters reported, citing the Abu Dhabi-based… Read more »

(JTA) — Lev Tahor, a fringe haredi Orthodox sect, requested political asylum from the Iranian government. In its request, the group “declared their loyalty and submission to the Supreme Leader and Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” It asks for “asylum, protection and religious freedom of the families… Read more »

(JTA) – Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis in Hungary opened two new synagogues in the Budapest area. The larger synagogue in Újlipótváros, a central area of the capital city, is housed in a riverside building overlooking the Danube River. It will be part of a three-story Jewish community center and worship complex… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Ro Khanna, a rising star among progressive Democrats, wants to make a point about how to be progressive and pro-Israel, so he quotes Alan Dershowitz. Yes, that Alan Dershowitz, the Fox News habitue who has accused the Democratic Party of “tolerating anti-Semitism.” “I don’t agree with… Read more »