(JTA) — One of the more colorful portions of the daylong Yom Kippur liturgy is the reading of the book of Jonah, an enigmatic narrative of a reluctant prophet, an indignant God and a giant fish. But because of the service’s timing, relatively few people are around to hear it. So one rabbi is spicing…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Eighteen Jewish Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives wrote Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressing disappointment in his rollback of religious pluralism reforms. “We write to express our profound concerns about recent decisions that seem to call into question the legitimacy and equal status of non-Orthodox Jews,” said the letter sent…
(JTA) — Israel Ambassador David Friedman’s comments on the West Bank and Israeli settlements do not indicate a change in U.S. policy, a State Department spokeswoman said. Friedman told the Israeli news site Walla on Thursday that Israel was occupying only 2 percent of the West Bank, that the two-state solution “had lost its meaning”…
(JTA) — Despite a controversy over the scheduling of a Washington, D.C., anti-racism protest on Yom Kippur, Jewish groups are participating in sister marches the day after the holiday. Jewish groups participating Sunday in a New York event for the March for Racial Justice include the American Union of Jewish Students, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call…
Ivanka Trump was on tour this week, promoting STEM educating and encouraging young students to take on computer coding. But she didn’t get a welcome from one of the nation’s largest groups working to help girls study programming at an early age. Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, which works with 40,000 young female…
(JTA) SAN FRANCISCO (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — A speech by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz at the University of California, Berkeley, may be blocked because organizers did not give campus police the required eight-week notice for the event. Dershowitz’s lecture, tentatively titled “The Liberal Case for Israel,” is planned for Oct….
Palestinian activists are urging South Africa’s University of Cape Town to impose an academic and cultural boycott on Israel – a move now being debated by the school’s Academic Freedom Committee. “The rationale for this call is clear – Palestinian human rights are violated by Israel on a daily basis with the direct and indirect…
NEW YORK (JTA) — The Orthodox Jewish world is even more fragmented than you think. That’s the key takeaway from a study published Thursday of Modern Orthodox Jews in the U.S., a group that adheres to traditional Jewish law while engaging with the secular world. Some of them think women should be rabbis and others…
Bernie Sanders took some time on Thursday to meet with Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist visiting Washington after being arrested and prosecuted by Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials. According to Amro, he and the Vermont senator discussed the Israel-Palestine conflict, including “discussing the current situation on the ground and what can be done to change…
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Since 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court has not held public sessions on Yom Kippur. Since the court opens its term on the first Monday in October, it is not unusual for the Jewish Day of Atonement to arrive just as the court begins its public work. How the Supreme Court came to…
Roughly half of Modern Orthodox Jews think that women should have “expanded roles in the clergy,” according to a new survey out yesterday from Nishma Research. The even split is yet another indicator of the stakes of the Orthodox Union’s impending decision on what to do about synagogues that continue to buck its new rule…
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