Tagged HEADLINES

(JNS) As the Israel Defense Forces ploughs ahead with an operation to expose and destroy a network of Hezbollah tunnels snaking their way into northern Israel from Lebanon, the military must also be prepared for the risk of a sudden escalation with the powerful Shi’ite terrorist organization, a former… Read more »

BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — Israeli technology hired by Argentina to provide security during the G20 global leaders’ summit detected several unauthorized drone incidents. Despite previous fears, the participation of leaders from 19 countries and the European Union wasn’t affected. The Defense Ministry of Argentina signed a contract worth more… Read more »

(Kveller via JTA) – “Winter is coming.” These three words have hung over mothers like dark clouds for decades, long before “Game of Thrones” came along. For we all know what that short, ominous phrase means: months of interminable sickness in the house. As the days shorten, germs will… Read more »

There’s no rule that says Jews are required to eat chicken on Shabbat — that is, no rule was ever handed down from a rabbi or written in the Torah. But it is a long-standing practice for many Eastern European Jewish families to serve roast chicken on Friday night.… Read more »

Winston Churchill was so impressed by Uganda during his 1907 safari that he wrote a book about it titled “My African Journey.” Published in 1908, Churchill wrote of the then-British Protectorate: “For magnificence, for variety of form and color, for profusion of brilliant life — bird, insect, reptile, beast —… Read more »

(JTA) — Several days after the Jewish Daily Forward published the first-ever report from the Islamic Republic of Iran by a reporter openly representing a Jewish, pro-Israel news outlet, the host of CNN’s foreign affairs show “GPS” posed a vexing question. Citing the Forward’s surprisingly favorable account of the… Read more »

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (JTA) — Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, his Israeli-born wife, Miriam, and Haim Saban, the Israeli-American entertainment mogul, entered the deck of the pool complex at the Diplomat Hotel here on Saturday night and chose a table to sit around and well, schmooze. Never mind the frantic security… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – George H.W. Bush, the one-term president whose public grappling with Jewish leaders made headlines while his private interventions helped bring tens of thousands of Jews out of danger, has died. Bush, 94, died Friday at his home in Houston, his family said, less than a year after… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — This is a story of gratitude. So much gratitude. In 1983, my local rabbi handed me his guitar and taught me four chords. He said (paraphrasing the first century sage Hillel) “Lisa, with these four chords you can play any Jewish song. All the rest is commentary.… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Opposition to vaccination on political and religious grounds has been swaying parents across the country to refuse immunizations for their children. Recently this has resulted in two of the largest measles outbreaks in New York’s history, impacting haredi Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. The opposition to vaccines… Read more »

… Read more »

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Shopping was the last thing on Sarah Hirsch’s mind this summer when she boarded a flight from Tel Aviv to this capital city. It started out as a Holocaust pilgrimage. Hirsch, 67, flew to Warsaw in August with her husband, Naftali, and a friend to see… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Had she received a better Jewish education, Marianne Williamson says, she might have become a rabbi. Instead, Williamson has become one of the country’s best-known New Age self-help gurus, reaching millions of people over more than three decades in the public eye. She counts Oprah and… Read more »

JScreen Offers Hanukkah Discount and Highlights Top 5 Reasons You Should Spit with Your Partner   (Atlanta)—JScreen, a not-for-profit at home education and genetic carrier screening program, highlights the top 5 reasons couples should spit to ensure that they receive essential genetic information that can help them plan for… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is just one of 435 members of the incoming U.S. House of Representatives, but her youth, surprise primary win in her Bronx-area district, socialism and, above all, outspokenness have attracted outsize attention. So when Ocasio-Cortez, 29, likened the crisis at the U.S. border with… Read more »

(JTA) — Israel’s official Jewish religious authority has published a list of rabbis it trusts to perform Jewish conversions. They are all Orthodox. Advocates for religious reform in Israel said the publication of the list of 69 rabbinical courts was a mixed bag: While they are happy to see… Read more »

Tova Hartman (Courtesy of Hartman)

KIRYAT ONO, Israel (JTA) — Last year, at the diverse campuses of Ono Academic College, some of my students expressed concern and even dismay over the Christmas tree we had set up next to the Hanukkah menorah. The students were understandably wary of what such Christian symbols have meant to… Read more »

(Israel Hayom via JNS) In what was the first ever address by a Czech leader to Israel’s legislative body, President Miloš Zeman sent a message of “solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people” to the Knesset on Monday. Among those in attendance at the historic speech were Israeli President… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Liana Finck is in the eating area of a grocery store in Southampton, New York, and I’ve interrupted her beach excursion. Once a week, the Brooklyn-based illustrator rides a train to the east end of Long Island to channel her creative energy. She wakes up… Read more »

… Read more »