JTA
By JTA
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Fast Forward Maryland School District May Scrap Jewish Holidays Amid Muslim Push
The superintendent of a Maryland school district has recommended removing Jewish holidays from the school calendar. Schools in Montgomery County would still close on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, according to Superintendent Joshua Starr’s recommendation. The issue behind the recommendation is that the schools are closed for Jewish holidays and not Muslim holidays, NBC Washington…
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News Joe Biden Tells Federations Will Say No to ‘Bad Iran Deal’
With the Nov. 24 deadline for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program looming, Vice President Joe Biden vowed that the United States “will not sign a bad deal.” “Let me say to you clearly in Bidenesque way: We will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon – period,” he said in an address Monday to the…
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Fast Forward Northwestern Wins Court Fight With Chabad Over Drinks
Northwestern University did not discriminate against a local Chabad house when it cut ties with the religious institution, a federal appeals court has ruled. The university cut ties in September 2012 with the Tannenbaum Chabad House and its director, Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein, after reports that the rabbi had served underage students wine and hard…
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The Schmooze Bob Geldof Re-Booting ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ For Ebola
Getty Images Musician and philanthropist Bob Geldof, who in 1984 inspired a generation of rock stars to record a charity single for Africa, will raise money to combat Ebola with a new version of the song. Geldof, frontman for Irish new wave band The Boomtown Rats, pulled together the Band Aid supergroup for “Do They…
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Fast Forward Dutch Chief Rabbi Says Men Sped Car at Him
Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs filed a complaint with police against two men whom he said tried to intimidate him at a gas station. Jacobs, chief rabbi of the Interprovincial Rabbinate for The Netherlands, filed the complaint last week after two men on Nov. 5 drove a BMW car in his direction in a sudden…
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Fast Forward Greek University Unveils Holocaust Memorial on Site of Jewish Cemetery
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, partly built on the ruins of the city’s historic Jewish cemetery, unveiled a memorial to the graveyard that was destroyed by the Nazis. Greek Jewish leaders hailed the erection of the monument, a series of grave stones in a bed of green grass next to a broken menorah, as a late,…
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News Supreme Court Judges Laud ‘Wonder’ of 3 Jewish Justices at Federation G.A.
Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer and Elana Kagan talked about their Jewish identities at the opening plenary of the 2014 General Assembly conference of the Jewish Federations of North America. Speaking before a crowd of more than 2,000 at the conference center just outside Washington, Breyer said the most remarkable thing about there being three…
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Fast Forward Jewish Donors Desert Britain’s Labor Party After ‘Palestine’ Vote
Jewish donors and supporters are deserting Britain’s Labor party over party leader Ed Miliband’s perceived pro-Palestinian stance. Miliband has been warned of the loss of Jewish support, the U.K. Independent reported Sunday. Miliband, the son of Holocaust refugees, last month ordered all party lawmakers to vote in favor of a nonbinding motion to recognize the…
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Culture An Israeli genocide scholar looks to Israel’s history to understand ‘what went wrong’
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Fast Forward Writer of sitcom airing instead of Eurovision in Ireland calls broadcaster’s boycott over Israel ‘disgraceful antisemitism’