Tagged HEADLINES

It’s official: Gal Gadot will portray Jewish actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr in a Showtime limited series. The cable network made the announcement on Aug. 9. Gadot had been rumored as the leading candidate for the role for about a year. The Israeli actress and her husband, Yaron Varsano,… Read more »

(JTA) — A pickup truck drove into a row of Jewish protesters demonstrating at the street entrance to an ICE detention center in Rhode Island on Wednesday night. It appears no one was seriously injured. Protesters were then pepper-sprayed, according to people present at the protest. Hundreds of Jewish… Read more »

Charles Plotkin, 87, former executive director of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, died July 27, 2019. Mr. Plotkin was born in the Bronx, New York, to Ethel and Abraham “Arthur” Plotkin. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, earned a Bachelor of Arts from the City College… Read more »

(JTA) — Not long after news that a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, left at least 22 people dead, reports started swirling that the suspect had posted a manifesto on 8chan, an online forum. Law enforcement officials are investigating a document posted there that is believed… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — A bipartisan slate of senators introduced a bill that would fund Holocaust education in schools. The Never Again Education Act would establish the Holocaust Education Assistance Program Fund in the U.S. Treasury. The bill would combine appropriated funds and private donations. A release July 11 from… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Palestinian gunman who crossed the border from southern Gaza into Israel shot and injured three Israeli soldiers. The gunman was killed by other soldiers in the area in the early Thursday morning incident, according to the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF said it also fired… Read more »

(JTA) — After three and a half years as editor in chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Andrew Silow-Carroll will be the next editor of the New York Jewish Week. The veteran journalist will succeed Gary Rosenblatt, who stepped down last month after 26 years as editor and publisher… Read more »

The Beth Shalom Temple Center in Green Valley will kick off a monthly film series on Sunday, Aug. 4, with a free screening of two short films at 11 a.m. “A Reuben by Any Other Name” takes a hilarious look at the differences between Orthodox and Reform Judaism in… Read more »

(JTA) — Canada is not changing the date of its national elections, even though they fall on a Jewish holiday. Chief electoral officer Stéphane Perrault announced Monday that he would not recommend changing the date, which coincides with the last days of Sukkot. Last week the country’s federal court ordered him to… Read more »

(JTA) — Monday’s Google doodle is of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat stationed in Lithuania during World War II who defied the Nazis by issuing life-saving visas to thousands of Jews. The Simon Wiesenthal Center estimates that as many as 40,000 people are alive today because of Sugihara’s efforts,… Read more »

(JTA) — Barbra Streisand has been “writing a lot” about modern anti-Semitism in her memoir, which she has been working on for years. “It’s an extremely complex topic, and there’s not enough room in this interview to adequately cover it,” the show business icon said in an interview with the Chicago… Read more »

(JTA) — More than 1,400 Jewish clergy from across the United States have signed a letter that calls on government officials to protect the legal right to seek asylum in the United States. HIAS, an immigrant advocacy and aid group formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, organized the… Read more »

(JTA) — MGM Resorts International said it will change the logo on its security uniforms, yellow shirts with a symbol that looks like a Jewish star. The announcement came after a Jewish woman who attended a show at MGM Northfield Park in suburban Cleveland noticed the logo and was… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A new left-wing alliance including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak has formed to take on Benjamin Netanyahu and the right wing that backs him in Israel’s September elections. The united slate announced Thursday has the far-left Meretz party running with Barak’s new Israel Democratic Party and… Read more »

(JTA) — A former Nazi SS soldier was charged with denying the Holocaust in Germany. Karl Munter, 96, was indicted in the German state of Lower Saxony on Wednesday for questioning the extent of the Holocaust and offensive comments he made about the victims of a massacre of civilians… Read more »

(JTA) — Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, reiterated statements about terminating his government’s dealings with Israel. Abbas’ announcement Thursday followed an emergency meeting after Israel razed Palestinian buildings built without permit on the edge of Jerusalem, near the security barrier that Israel built in the West… Read more »

(JTA) — Following protests, authorities in eastern France rescinded a ban they had issued forbidding soccer fans from Israel from flying their country’s flag in the streets of Strasbourg. The prohibitions, which are unusual and provoked vociferous criticism, came in a four-page order Thursday from the head of the Bas-Rhin… Read more »

(JTA) — Yuval Noah Harari, an internationally celebrated historian from Israel, omitted criticism of Russia from a translation of a book to avoid censorship there, he said. The criticism was “liable to be censored by the Russian government,” Harari told Haaretz in an interview published Thursday about the Russian-language… Read more »

(JTA) — A CNN photo editor resigned after some anti-Semitic tweets he made in 2011 were discovered. Mohammed Elshamy, a 25-year-old former photojournalist with the Anadolu news agency, quit Thursday night after an employee of Israel’s Government Press Office flagged on Twitter some of the anti-Semitic statements by Elshamy,… Read more »

(JTA) — Norway and six EU countries voted at the United Nations in favor of two resolutions that singled out Israel for criticism as a violator of women’s and human rights. Israel was the only country named Tuesday as a violator or trouble spot by the 54-nation UN Economic… Read more »