(JTA) — They didn’t share the same religion, but they shared the same pain. Ten members of a Pittsburgh congregation who survived the October attack on their building, along with their rabbi, traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, to worship with the members of a church that suffered a similar shooting in 2015. Eleven worshippers were killed…
(JTA) – At a Holocaust commemoration event at the European Parliament, Jewish community leaders outlined an unusually pessimistic view of European Jewry’s present and future resulting from anti-Semitism. The ceremony Wednesday at the European Parliament’s annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day event was the first such event in which European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor raised…
Representative Ilhan Omar has apologized for a tweet she wrote in 2012, in which she said that “Israel has hypnotized the world” during the war with Gaza. The Minnesota congresswoman acknowledged Monday that she prioritized putting her tweet into context rather than condemning the offensive language. “In all sincerity, it was after my CNN interview…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Reports of rollbacks in Palestinian aid projects are emerging as massive cuts in U.S. aid to the Palestinians kick in. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that up to 90,000 Palestinians will not get food aid in programs that are administered by nongovernmental organizations funded by U.S. assistance. NPR reported last week that…
It’s not all traditional politics in Chris Christie’s forthcoming book, “Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics” — the former New Jersey governor also reveals a conversation he had with President Trump over his daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism. In the book, due out January 29, Christie…
(JTA) — An Orthodox rabbi was appointed to serve in the Illinois State Legislature. Rabbi Yehiel Kalish was sworn in to the Illinois House of Representatives on Sunday night. Kalish, 43, is the first rabbi to serve as an Illinois state representative. “I may be the first rabbi in any state legislature. And that’s very exciting,”…
A Miami teenager who was arrested for a rabbi’s murder and later cleared of the charges is suing Miami’s police department, claiming that police jailed him despite having evidence that suggested he was not involved. De’Andre Charles was arrested in 2015 at age 14 for the murder of Rabbi Joseph Raksin during a botched robbery….
At the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, one does not have to give up practicing Judaism for committing a crime. So like many offenders before him, Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, asked to be placed there after he was sentenced to three years in prison on fraud charges last month. As The…
(JTA) — Two Jewish U.S. citizens have been detained in Ukraine on suspicion that they vandalized a crucifix while inebriated, prosecutors said. The incident, which occurred last month, is the latest in a series of hostilities in Uman, a pilgrimage site for Jews where friction with the local population often results in cycles of hate…
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel “anti-Semitic” during a town hall in Ontario last week. “I will continue to condemn the BDS movement,” Trudeau said. Speaking at Brock University in St. Catharines, Trudeau was asked by an audience member to retract his previous condemnations of BDS,…
The Israeli Defense Forces has a few thoughts to share on Iran’s status in the Middle East. In a tweet Monday, the IDF shared a map of the region with a feisty drawing of arrows pointing to “where Iran is,” in Syria, and “where Iran should be,” in its own country. “Iran, you seem to…
