JERUSALEM (JTA) — Some 3.6 million tourists visited Israel in 2017. The figure, an all-time record, represents a 25 percent increase over the previous year, the Israelis business daily Globes reported, citing Ministry of Tourism statistics. The largest number of tourists, close to 700,000, came from the United States. Tourists from Russia represented the second…
Yisrael Campbell is a Catholic-turned Orthodox Jewish comedian who has made his complicated spiritual path the subject of over a decade of stand-up jokes. Campbell was born in Pennsylvania to a family of Irish and Italian Catholics and later in life went through a series of Jewish conversations — first to Reform, then Conservative and…
(JTA) — It’s always difficult to whittle down the list of influential Jews who died in a given year, but this year the task seemed to be especially tough. From a pioneering LGBTQ activist to a pair of legendary comedians to a 104-year-old haredi Orthodox rabbi, here are some of the Jews we lost in…
(JTA) — A Houston imam walked back a sermon in which he called for Muslims to kill Jews without specifically apologizing for his comments. Imam Raed Saleh Al-Rousan of Houston’s Tajweed Institute earlier this month delivered what he called an “impassioned sermon,” according to a statement about the speech issued on Wednesday. “I unequivocally affirm…
“Alt-right” provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, never one to self-censor, was exposed in a particularly embarrassing way today after a court filing revealed the edits made to the manuscript for his book “Dangerous.” Yiannopoulos sued his onetime publisher Simon & Schuster in July after they pulled out of a deal to publish the book after learning that…
Roy Moore, the Republican nominee who lost the Senate election in Alabama earlier this month, filed a last minute-legal complaint alleging election fraud and asking the state not to confirm that his opponent won. Moore, who refused to concede on election night that he lost to Democratic opponent Doug Jones, argued in state court that…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Reports that the U.S. ambassador to Israel asked the State Department to stop calling the West Bank “occupied” are misleading, a department official said. Israel’s Kan public broadcaster reported on Tuesday that David Friedman asked the State Department to stop calling Israel’s control over the West Bank an “occupation” in official documents….
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – With technology coming up short, Israel’s agriculture minister sought an unconventional solution on Thursday to end the country’s water shortage – rallying a few thousand worshippers at Jerusalem’s Western Wall to pray for rain. Four years of heavy drought have overtaxed Israel’s unmatched array of desalination and wastewater treatment plants, choking its…
BEIRUT – Lebanese politicians on Thursday criticized Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil over a television interview in which he was shown saying that Lebanon did not have an ideological problem with Israel and was not against it having security. The comments, made to al-Mayadin television channel during a long interview on Tuesday, had just started attracting…
(JTA) — Some 63 Israeli high school students signed a public letter declaring that they will refuse to be drafted into the Israel Defense Forces. The letter, published on Thursday in the Hebrew-language daily Yediot Acharonot, was addressed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Education Minister Naftali Bennett and IDF Chief of…
(JTA) — With the arrival of a flight carrying 93 new immigrants, a total of 3,633 people from North America made aliyah in 2017, Nefesh B’Nefesh reported. The group flight that landed at Ben Gurion International Airport on Wednesday included 15 future lone soldiers and a soon-to-be bride, according to the organization which, in cooperation…
100% of profits support our journalism
