Tagged HEADLINES

These Jewish groups are fighting — even physically, according to some — behind the scenes

Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, at a Capitol Hill hearing on moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Nov. 8, 2017. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
May 16, 2018 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Last year, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations updated its secret rules to ban “insults, ad hominem attacks, and name-calling” among member organizations and instituted a special committee to consider complaints in strictest confidence. On May 2, the committee met, in strictest confidence,… Read more »

At U.S. embassy dedication, a day for marking history and praising Trump

People watching President Donald Trump speak on a video shown at the opening ceremony of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, May 14, 2018. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
May 14, 2018 / Sam Sokol, JTA

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli leaders and citizens responded with euphoria as the Trump administration moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem on Monday, designating a pre-existing consular building as the official U.S. diplomatic mission to the Jewish State. Hundreds of revelers, many wearing Trump’s signature red baseball caps commemorating the… Read more »

OP-ED When Jewish students in America raised alarms about the Holocaust

The cover of Yeshiva University's student newspaper, The Commentator, from March 4, 1943, shows that Jewish students were active in efforts to draw attention to the plight of Europe's Jews. (Courtesy of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies)
May 8, 2018 / David Golinkin and Noam Sachs Zion, JTA

  JERUSALEM (JTA) — Seventy-five years ago this month, a handful of rabbinical students in New York City helped mobilize hundreds of churches and synagogues nationwide to cry out against the Nazis’ mass murder of European Jewry. That remarkable interfaith protest is omitted from the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s new… Read more »

Iran’s options now that Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear deal

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani addresses the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City, Sept. 22, 2016. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
May 8, 2018 / Behnam Ben Taleblu, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — An inflection point in American policy towards Iran came this afternoon, when President Trump announced he will re-impose nuclear sanctions on Iran and effectively withdraw the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal. Having done so, the administration should anticipate the range… Read more »

Rabbi Aaron Panken remembered as joyful leader who embodied the ‘best of the Reform movement’

Rabbi Aaron Panken teaching a Talmud class to Hebrew Union College students. (Courtesy of HUC)
May 8, 2018 / Josefin Dolsten, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — Rabbi Andrea Weiss, an associate professor of Bible at the New York campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and its incoming provost, remembered the joy that Rabbi Aaron Panken brought to his work. Weiss recalled how Panken would pop into his colleagues’ offices asking if… Read more »

OP-ED To fight anti-Semitism, first you have to define it

A Turkish demonstrator holding a banner with a Nazi swastika and Star of David in Istanbul, Jan. 2, 2009. (Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images)
May 8, 2018 / Andrew Baker, JTA

(JTA) — In recent years we have witnessed anti-Israel demonstrations that have turned overtly anti-Semitic and even violent, but police ignored initially as only political activity. We have seen prosecutors and judges rule that an arson attack on a synagogue is not anti-Semitic because the perpetrator was motivated by… Read more »

This Jewish lawmaker wanted to keep Chinese immigrants out. Should a park be named after him?

A view of the Julius Kahn playground in San Francisco. (Omunene/Flickr Commons)
May 8, 2018 / Joe Eskenazi, J. the Jewish News of Northern California via JTA

SAN FRANCISCO (J. the Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Julius Kahn III grew up in San Francisco, playing in Julius Kahn Playground, named for his grandfather. The view from this clearing in the opulent Presidio Heights neighborhood is among the best in the city, meaning it’s… Read more »

How Israel’s tech scene is helping wounded combat veterans

Shoshi Rushnevsky, the founder of Restart, hopes "Makers for Heroes" will make the lives of wounded veterans a little easier. (Ben Sales)
May 7, 2018 / Ben Sales, JTA

TEL AVIV (JTA) – When Elad Horovitz was shot in the head during Israel’s 2014 war in Gaza, his first concern was survival, not how to maintain peripheral vision while driving. Horovitz, then 20, was shot through his left ear and right eye. Somehow he survived, losing half of… Read more »

This bike saved Jews from Nazis
May 7, 2018 /

The Giro d’Italia bike race is moving from Israel to Italy but this story lives on — about the heroic sports hero Gino Bartali, the Tour de France and Giro champ who saved 800 Jews from the Holocaust by teaming up with a convent of singing nuns and document-forging… Read more »

OP-ED Ms. Diagnoses: Women’s Lives Are at Risk
May 7, 2018 / Ellen Hershkin, Hadassah
Ellen Hershkin

A national call to action for National Women’s Health Week (May 13–19) Women’s health is on life support. Inequities in insurance premiums, gender bias, treatment and care must end. Women’s health doesn’t advance itself, so it’s up to women to be their own healthcare advocates. Women have always been… Read more »

Starbucks denies speculation that it ‘demoted’ ADL in its anti-bias training
May 3, 2018 / Debra Nussbaum Cohen, JTA
A view of a Starbucks shop in Washington, D.C., April 17, 2018. The company announced that it will close more than 8,000 U.S. stores on May 29 to conduct "racial-bias education" following the arrest of two black men in one of its cafes. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Starbucks denied that it demoted the Anti-Defamation League from a lead role in its anti-bias training, saying it continues to view the Jewish group as a valuable partner in future training. Reggie Borges, a spokesman for the coffee giant, spoke to JTA on Wednesday following… Read more »

An eye doctor who moved to Israel is now making a difference in Africa

Dr. Morris Hartstein, center, frequently travels to Gondar, Ethiopia, to run clinics where he sees up to 500 patients at a time and performs some surgeries. (Courtesy of Hartstein)
May 2, 2018 / Renee Ghert-Zand

RAANANA, Israel — In August 2014, Dr. Morris Hartstein went on a trip to Gondar, Ethiopia, where thousands of Ethiopians seeking to immigrate to Israel live and wait while Israel considers their eligibility to make aliyah. On his second day there, Hartstein showed up for the afternoon mincha service and… Read more »

This British Jewish school has mostly Muslim students

Students at the King David Elementary School in Birmingham celebrate Israel's 70th anniversary, April 19, 2018. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
May 1, 2018 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

BIRMINGHAM, United Kingdom (JTA) — Like hundreds of Jewish institutions in the Diaspora, the King David School celebrated Israel’s 70th Independence Day with blue-and-white flags and group singing of the “Hatikvah” national anthem. But the King David is not like most other Jewish schools. Most of the dozens of… Read more »

OP-ED Why Israel is investing in Diaspora Jewish education

Millions of Jews, mainly in North America, are drifting away from Judaism, writes Israel’s minister of education and Diaspora affairs. (David Whelan/Flickr Commons)
April 30, 2018 / Naftali Bennett, JTA

JERUSALEM (JTA) — For decades, world Jewry helped Israel. Organizations gathered and sent funds to the feeble, small state; our Air Force and Navy were formed and trained by Jewish volunteers from around the globe. As we celebrate our 70th Independence Day, we should thank the previous generations while… Read more »

‘RBG’ filmmakers hope to inspire Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s millennial fans

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has attained pop culture icon status in the last decade. (Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
April 30, 2018 / Josefin Dolsten, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — One of the first scenes in a new documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg features the Supreme Court associate justice, then 84, vigorously lifting weights, doing leg exercises and holding herself in a plank position. The much buzzed-about workout routine has only added to her status… Read more »

Mikvah-peeping Rabbi Barry Freundel’s jail sentence reduced by over a year due to good behavior

Rabbi Barry Freundel exits a courthouse after entering his guilty plea, Feb. 19, 2015. (Dmitriy Shapiro/Washington Jewish Week)
April 27, 2018 / Josefin Dolsten, JTA

(JTA) — The jail sentence of Rabbi Barry Freundel, a once-prominent Modern Orthodox rabbi in Washington, D.C. who secretly filmed women in his synagogue’s mikvah, has been shortened by over a year due to good behavior, his lawyer said. Freundel’s 6 1/2-year sentence also was reduced because he participated as… Read more »

Over 2,000 Germans attend kippah rallies in Berlin and other cities
April 27, 2018 /

(JTA) – More than 2,000 Jews and non-Jews attended “Wear a Kippah” rallies in Berlin and other German cities to protest anti-Semitism. The protests on Wednesday come in the wake of a Syrian asylum seeker’s attack on a non-Jewish man wearing a skullcap in the German capital last week. Jews were… Read more »