News

Newly-minted septuagenarian When Andy Kunsberg turned 70 in mid-December, his wife, Linda, planned a late December celebration. The party wasn’t a surprise but the guest list was. Relatives — daughter Rebecca Goodman, her husband Ted and their three children, plus Andy’s brother, brothers-in-law, nieces, great niece and nephews, from… Read more »

A beloved group of Israeli musicians, the Shalva Band, recently made the tough decision to give up a musical chance of a lifetime rather than risk being asked to desecrate the Sabbath. The group, which is comprised of musicians with various disabilities and diverse religious commitments, could not get… Read more »

Jewish decision-makers and funders in Israel, the United States, and around the world in part shape allocations and the dispensing of positions of influence on the basis of demographic studies. When interpretations of these studies are misapplied, too often pivotal policy mistakes are made. Jack Wertheimer’s “The New American… Read more »

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Feb. 18 – Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) today announced that Israel’s inaugural voyage to the moon – the world’s first privately funded lunar mission – will begin on Feb. 21 at approximately 8:45 p.m. EST, when the lunar lander “Beresheet” (“In the Beginning”)… Read more »

ORLANDO, Fla. (JTA) — Growing up, Josh Boloña was just like a lot of kids in South Florida: He was a Latino immigrant, from Ecuador, in an area with a lot of Latino immigrants. He was a Jewish kid in an area with many Jews. He was a soccer… Read more »

Leonard Coris

Leonard M. Coris, 78, died Jan. 31, 2019, of complications related to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Mr. Coris was born March 29, 1940, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Betty and Al Coris. He attended the Brookline public schools and MIT, where he earned master’s degrees in both food science and finance. He… Read more »

AMSTERDAM (JTA) – Growing up, Heidi Fishman knew that she was alive thanks to her grandfather’s Paraguayan passport. A Jewish author from Vermont, she was told as a little girl that Heinz Lichtenstern’s passport was the only reason that her maternal grandparents and mother managed to avoid being sent… Read more »

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — A one-time diplomat to the Latin American Jewish Congress has been appointed Venezuela’s diplomatic representative to Argentina by Juan Guaido, the self-declared interim president of Venezuela. Israel’s ambassador in Buenos Aires, Ilan Sztulman, referred to Elisa Trotta Gamus as “ambassador” during a meeting at the… Read more »

(JTA) — Thousands participated Tuesday in demonstrations against anti-Semitism across France. Protesters took to the streets in some 70 marches only hours after nearly 100 gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in the eastern French village of Quatzenheim were discovered vandalized with swastikas. Some protesters held posters saying “That’s Enough.” “Whoever did this… Read more »

(JTA) — Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan blamed “the wicked Jews” for the crisis over anti-Semitism and the Women’s March. “The most beautiful sight that I could lay eyes on when I saw, the day after Trump was elected, women from all over the world were standing in… Read more »

(JTA) — In a brief confidential conference call with Jewish organizations, Rep. Ilhan Omar apologized for any hurt caused by her tweets suggesting that AIPAC pays politicians to support Israel. “Let me reiterate my sincere apology for any actual hurt my words have caused,” Omar, a freshman Democratic congresswoman… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — This may be hard to remember, but three years ago it was a big deal when Bernie Sanders criticized Israel in public. During a debate in New York City with Hillary Clinton, Sanders generated headlines when he said the United States should care about Palestinian… Read more »

(JTA) — Bernie Sanders officially launched his second campaign for president. The Vermont senator’s 2020 campaign launched on Tuesday morning with an email to supporters and a tweet that included a nearly 2-minute video and a request for support. “I’m running for president. I am asking you to join me… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — It was meant to be a diplomatic triumph for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: a much-touted diplomatic summit here on Monday with four Central European states. Instead, harsh words from Israel’s acting foreign minister opened a diplomatic rift threatening to severely damage Israeli-Polish relations, and the… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Social media are spreading anti-Semitism, Jewish Agency chief Isaac Herzog told American Jewish leaders meeting here, and are “a hotbed of the lunatics of the world.” “The real dirt of the world comes up from the killing fields of social media,” he told the Conference of Presidents… Read more »

JTA — A YouTube personality was shot outside of a synagogue and Jewish school in Los Angeles by a security guard who said the shot was meant to be a warning. Zhoie Perez, 45, a transgender free speech activist with a following in the thousands, was shot Thursday outside… Read more »

Alison Feldman

Friends and family of Allison Feldman will gather on the University of Arizona campus at 10:30 a.m. on Friday to celebrate her life and launch the second annual campaign to raise funds for study abroad scholarships in her memory. Feldman was murdered in her Scottsdale home on Feb. 17,… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Donald Trump called on Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., to resign from Congress for what he said was her anti-Semitism. “It’s terrible what she said and I think she should either resign from Congress, or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee,” Trump… Read more »

(JTA) — Vice President Mike Pence will visit Auschwitz, his first visit to the Nazi death camp in Poland. Pence will visit the site on Friday with Polish President Andrzej Duda, The Washington Post reported Tuesday, citing a senior White House official. The vice president will be in Warsaw… Read more »

(JTA) — “I was the hairy Jewish monkey in a sea of blond kids.” That’s not Seth Rogen or Jonah Hill — it’s Sarah Silverman talking about her upbringing in Bedford, New Hampshire, on an upcoming episode of  “Finding Your Roots,” the celebrity genealogy show on PBS. Bedford, the… Read more »