NEW YORK (JTA) — A flagship liberal Orthodox synagogue in New York will stop congratulating same-sex couples on their weddings following a complaint by the Orthodox Union. The Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in the Bronx will no longer announce the weddings of its LGBT members in its newsletters in accordance with a policy dictated by…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel were intercepted over the southern town of Sderot by the Iron Dome anti-missile system. A third rocket fired Wednesday night landed in an empty field in the Eshkol region, also in southern Israel, the Israel Defense Forces said. There were no reports of…
(JTA) — Three swastikas were drawn on a desk in the classroom of a Jewish teacher at a Boston-area high school — the third time in recent months that a swastika has been discovered there. The swastikas were discovered Tuesday at Andover High, located about 20 miles north of Boston, hours before the start of…
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The man whom Dutch police released hours after he attacked a kosher restaurant while waving a Palestinian flag reportedly is a Damascus-born ex-combatant in Syria’s civil war. GeenStijl reported Wednesday that the perpetrator of the Dec. 7 assault in southern Amsterdam is Saleh Ali, who has said that he participated in the…
(JTA) — Students at a Jewish school in New Jersey broke the world record for the world’s largest human menorah. Over 500 students from Ben Porat Yosef, a private school in Paramus, stood in the shape of a Hanukkah candelabra on Wednesday morning, the first day of the Jewish holiday, Paramus Patch reported. A representative…
WASHINGTON, Dec 13 (Reuters) – Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Wednesday downplayed Republican lawmakers’ concerns that attorneys and agents investigating Russian alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election might be biased against President Trump. Republicans on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee ramped up their attacks on Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is heading…
TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israel-based Teva Pharmaceutical Industries will unveil a restructuring plan on Thursday that will include laying off more than half its Israeli workforce, the Calcalist financial news website said. Teva’s plan includes closing its research and development center in the coastal city of Netanya, selling its logistics center in Shoham and cutting…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Trump said he was “proud to stand with the Jewish people” on Hanukkah. “Melania and I wish all of our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrating this meaningful holiday a happy and healthy eight nights in the company of those they love,” Trump said in a message Tuesday evening, the first night…
Organizers behind last summer’s deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia are being denied permits to hold a second rally on its anniversary next year. The original rally, which drew a large crowd of white supremacists and neo-Nazis, devolved into violence and resulted in the killing of one counter-protestor. The city of Charlottesville said…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli security services thwarted a Hamas kidnapping plot set to take place during Hanukkah. A Hamas cell from a Palestinian village near Nablus in the West Bank planned to abduct an Israeli soldier or a settler from a bus stop near Nablus, the Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet, said in a…
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner posed with their children in an Instagram post on the first night of Hanukkah. The White House power couple stood smiling over a table strewn with menorahs, gelt and what appeared to be one golden dreidel. Curiously, only two of the five menorahs shown in the picture were lit. The…
