(JTA) — A synagogue in Madrid plans to present what it is calling the country’s first egalitarian Torah scroll because women participated in its writing. The scroll is slated to be unveiled Saturday at Congregation Bet El in the Spanish capital. Gustavo Surazski, an Argentina-born rabbi and sofer, or Torah scribe, began writing the scroll…
Ivanka Trump has been spotted several times since the early summer sporting a thin red thread tied around her wrist. Set against the backdrop of her meticulously styled “looks,” complete with Ivanka Trump-brand jewelry, dresses and shoes, the red threat might seem out of place — even off-brand. But the bracelet has special significance to…
(JTA) — The hometown in Belarus of the late artist Marc Chagall saw its first opening of a synagogue in over a century. The Jewish community of Vitebsk, which is located 155 miles northeast of the Belarusian capital of Minsk, last month celebrated the inauguration of the new synagogue. Vitebsk’s rabbi, Malkiel Gorgodze, affixed a…
A 93-year-old Holocaust survivor was saved by the quick actions of good Samaritans after he was pulled from his car seconds before a train collided with it on Tuesday, Fox News reported. Henry Flescher had become stuck on train tracks in Miami-Dade County after taking a curve too fast. He then realized there was a…
JERUSALEM (JTA) – Fifty years since the Six-Day War, 100 years since the Balfour Declaration, 150 years since Mark Twain first visited Palestine. This has been a year of big Israel-related anniversaries. To the Jewish state’s most diehard Christian supporters, the barrage of milestones is not mere coincidence but rather a harbinger of prophecies being…
(JTA) — An event scheduled to take place at the Jewish Museum of Florida on the Balfour Declaration was cancelled following a bomb threat. Law enforcement apprehended a Florida International University student after he allegedly issued the threat ahead of the event, which was slated to take place Thursday, the American Jewish Committee’s Miami office…
(JTA) — In what French Jews decried as judicial “weakness,” a Paris court sentenced the brother of a jihadist from Toulouse to 20 years in prison for terrorism in 2012 but cleared him of murder charges. Abdelkader Merah, whose brother, Moahmmed Merah in 2012 killed three soldiers and four Jews, including three children at a…
With snappy and conversational videos, the far-right is mastering YouTube — and finding new ways to promote ideas like white nationalism to the masses. YouTube “has created an environment where white nationalists and right-wing extremists can easily inject hateful rhetoric and conspiracy theories into national political discourse,” according to a report last month from Right…
Jared Kushner has reportedly handed over documents to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as the explosive Russia probe gets closer to his father-in-law’s inner circle. The presidential adviser and son-in-law provided information related to President Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey as well as the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russian figures seeking…
Sen. Al Franken publicly released a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday asking him to clarify his past statements on his knowledge of Russian connections to the Trump presidential campaign in light of the guilty plea by former campaign aide George Papadopoulos. According to press reports, Sessions was present when Papadopoulos announced in…
(JTA) — The Jewish community in Canada is taking issue with new census figures showing the country’s Jewish population falling 56 percent over the past five years. The decline to 143,665 in 2016 from 329,500 in 2011 was the largest drop for any ethnic group recorded in the Statistics Canada census data released last week….
