Rabbi Joshua Stanton HOBOKEN, N.J. (JTA) — Kosovo is a “newborn” country, a majority Muslim state that fought for its independence from Serbia only eight years ago. Yet it has erected a Holocaust memorial outside its parliament, elected a female president, held pride parades in support of LGBTQ rights and supported the building… Read more »
Amy Hirshberg Lederman I travel by air quite a bit and to be honest, it isn’t fun. Besides the stress of getting to the airport in sufficient time to remove half the clothing I put on just hours before, I generally arrive at my destination half-starved and sleep deprived. But the real angst… Read more »
On July 1, 20 nonprofit organizations will receive the first payments of grants totaling $328,335 from the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona’s competitive community grants process. Funding focused on three areas: Tucson Jewish Community, Israel and Global Jewry, and Tucson General Community. New this year were Synagogue Small… Read more »
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaking at a news conference at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, D.C, March 21, 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – When it comes to Israel, Democrats and Republicans simply do not see eye to eye, and for all their love of Zion, evangelicals will turn out for a candidate who is less than 100 percent on the issue. Welcome to the 2016 presidential election, when the… Read more »
Young Israelis living on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv in protest of high housing prices, Aug. 10, 2011. (Liron Almog/Flash90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — On one hand, most Israelis say their financial situation is good and getting better. On the other hand, they’re worried they won’t be able to provide for their children. On one hand, they want significantly more government spending in a wide range of public services.… Read more »
Director Yvan Attal, right, with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Dany Boon during the filming of "The Jews" in Paris. (Courtesy of Wild Bunch Productions)
PARIS (JTA) — When the French-Jewish film director Yvan Attal titled his much-hyped comedy about anti-Semitism “They Are Everywhere,” he did so in reference to how some anti-Semites feel about Jews and vice versa. But the French-language title applies in another way, too: Though the film has yet to… Read more »
On a tour of the Temple Mount, Yehuda Glick shows religious Jews a diagram of the Jewish temple that once stood where the golden Dome of the Rock stands today in Jerusalem, Sept. 17, 2013. (Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — A year and a half ago he was a fringe Temple Mount activist expected to die, the victim of a point-blank assassination attempt. This week he will enter the Knesset, the ruling Likud party’s replacement legislator for outgoing Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon. Yehuda Glick’s journey —… Read more »
Egyptian Ambassador to Israel Hazem Khairat receives ancient Egyptian relics
After journeying from the Western Desert tombs of Egypt, through Dubai, Europe and Israel, two 3,000 year-old stolen artifacts are making their way home on Sunday. The two wood and plaster sarcophagi lids, painted and carved with hieroglyphics, were given to Egyptian Ambassador Hazem Khairat on Sunday by Dore… Read more »
Jerusalem (TPS) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday night that the Arab nations in the region can help facilitate a “real deal with the Palestinians,” adding that he has been discussing the issue with regional leaders “over the last few hours.” “The initiatives I’m referring to are regional initiatives… Read more »
Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, speaking at a news conference at the Knesset, May 18, 2016. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — He was an outspoken politician with little military experience, appointed by a rival and promising to bring a new approach. Current and former officials at the Defense Ministry called his appointment an “enigma,” fretting that “it will take some time until he understands how things work”… Read more »
(JTA) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi to discuss how to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, along with other shared concerns. Meeting in Cairo Wednesday, Kerry “expressed his appreciation for recent statement of strong support for advancing Arab-Israeli peace,” State Department spokesman… Read more »
Avigdor Liberman speaking at a news conference in the Israeli parliament, May 18, 2016. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — The unity government was about to form: Likud and Labor, right and left, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Isaac Herzog. Then, according to media reports, Netanyahu swung to the right and instead embraced an old partner: Avigdor Liberman, head of the hard-line… Read more »
Washington, D.C. – Today, people from diverse spiritual backgrounds will call, email, and tweet congressional representatives and senators, urging them to close a dangerous loophole in current gun laws. This call to action was spearheaded by Jewish Women International’s Interfaith Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence — a group of 36 faiths… Read more »
Members of the Tzav Pius 13-year-olds' team in the Israeli city of Pardes Hanna participating before practice in an educational exercise meant to teach teamwork.
PARDES HANNA, Israel (JTA) — When Yoel decided, at age 8, to begin observing Shabbat, there was one problem: It meant he couldn’t join most of Israel’s youth soccer teams, which played games on Saturday. Yoel, now 12, has always lived in the increasingly large gray area between Israel’s… Read more »
The Detroit skyline (Wikimedia Commons)
(JTA) — For the second year in a row, the Detroit area’s Walk for Israel has rebuffed the sponsorship of left-wing pro-Israel groups because of their support for boycotting settlements. At the heart of the dispute is a question of definitions: Is support of a boycott targeting Jewish enterprises beyond… Read more »
Jonathan Sarna at Brandeis University, his undergraduate alma mater and where he has taught for more than 25 years, May 10, 2016. (Uriel Heilman)
WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA) – When Jonathan Sarna was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1999 at the age of 44, it changed his life. Already a highly regarded historian at Brandeis University, Sarna was in the midst of writing his seminal study of American Jewish history when he realized with… Read more »
Students at an elementary school in Portland, Maine, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, March 25, 2015. (Gabe Souza/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — As a U.S. immigrant and a parent, I’m somewhat fanatical about my kids’ appreciation for their citizenship. Last year I organized what I hope will be an annual second-grade field trip to our local swearing-in ceremony for new American citizens. As a result of that experience,… Read more »
Almost every person can recall the myths they accepted as fact as a child, until a knowledgeable adult, dictionary or Google has proved them otherwise. I used to believe that bats are blind. (While they do use echolocation at night, they still have functioning eyes.) Another myth I believed… Read more »
Anti-Israel students at Columbia University erected a mock "apartheid wall" in front of the iconic Low Library steps during Israel Apartheid Week, March 3, 2016. (Uriel Heilman)
NEW YORK (JTA) — The Forward recently asked college students “to tell us about a college experience that had shaped their Jewish identity in some way.” Of the six students whose responses it published, five attend American universities. Of those, two are members of Students for Justice in Palestine,… Read more »
Hillel Kuttler, right, and Avraham Rechtshafer meeting at a Jerusalem pizza shop for the first time since the mid-1980s. (Hillel Kuttler)
The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. JERUSALEM (JTA) – On a pleasant evening in this capital city, through the near darkness, I caught his wave from a half-block away. Soon we were standing together, smiling and clasping hands, two men who hadn’t seen… Read more »
