(JTA) – An Israel-based Jewish educational group, Dirshu, has enrolled its 1,000th student in France into classes devoted to studying the Talmud, a central text of Orthodox Jewish tradition. The current level of enrollment was reached two years after Dirshu, which was founded in 1997, began its current cycle of study in France, Rabbi Naftali…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the prominent modern Orthodox rabbi who oversaw Ivanka Trump’s conversion to Judaism, said he is not the rabbi who gave the first daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner a dispensation to fly on Air Force One on Shabbat. Lookstein told Isaac Herzog, leader of the opposition Zionist Union party, that…
An Israeli minister denounced a major arms deal between the United States and Saudi Arabia — but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held off on criicizing the $110B pact. “This is a matter that really should trouble us,” said Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz prior to a weekly cabinet meeting, although Netanyahu made no mention of…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that all Cabinet ministers must attend the arrival ceremony at Ben-Gurion International airport for President Donald Trump after learning most were not planning to attend. Israeli media reported, citing an unnamed senior government official, that the prime minister got very angry at the meeting when he learned that so…
‘Saturday Night Live’ used Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ to send a hilarious season finale shot at President Trump. Alec Baldwin opened the show by playing Trump and crooning his version of the last Jewish songwriter’s classic, defending himself against various perceived plots against him. He was joined by other characters who have mocked Trump’s inner circle…
NEW YORK (JTA) — Following its rabbinic ruling prohibiting synagogues from hiring female clergy, the Orthodox Union is pressuring synagogues that have hired the women to change their titles. In February, the Orthodox Union, an umbrella Orthodox Jewish group, issued a Jewish legal ruling by seven rabbis that bars women from serving as clergy or in…
(JTA) — A Polish alderman is seeking the removal of references to anti-Semitic violence in the history of Bialystok from a graphic novel about the city. Marek Chojnowski, who represents the ruling Law and Justice party on the Bialystok City Council, was quoted this week by the news site Onet as protesting references to a 1906…
In 85 years of business, the King David Hotel has hosted emperors, kings, prime ministers and divas and on Monday it will add another historic name to its storied annals — U.S. President Donald Trump. Perched in the heart of Jerusalem, with sweeping views of its walled Old City, its terraces surveying manicured gardens, a…
A White House video designed to promote the first trip abroad by President Trump seemingly portrayed a shocking change in American policy and the Trump administration’s beliefs. But it was pulled almost immediately. The video was intended to promote the trip to four countries. A slide in the video showed a map of Israel with…
(JTA) — A candidate for the nationalist UKIP party in the United Kingdom’s general elections wrote anti-Semitic remarks regularly on Twitter, including one that justified the Holocaust. The Campaign Against Antiseitism, a British watchdog, on Friday published its dossier on Captain Paddy Singh, UKIP’s candidate for the Wiltshire North constituency in the June 8 general elections. The…
(JTA) — Stephen Miller, who serves as Trump’s senior adviser for policy, is reportedly the primary author of a speech on Islam that the president will deliver in Saudia Arabia. Trump will be giving the speech, which will address radical Islam, in front of representatives of 50 Muslim countries as part of his first overseas trip. He…
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