David Friedman, Donald Trump’s choice for ambassador to Israel, has been making the rounds with leaders of Jewish organizations in recent days, and has succeeded in winning over at least one of them. Ron Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, met with Friedman on Monday and issued a statement expressing confidence that Friedman will…
— Rabbi Lionel Blue, the first openly gay British rabbi and a popular on-air personality, has died. Blue, a broadcaster on BBC Radio 4’s “Thought for the Day” show for 30 years, died Monday at 86. He had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for many years. His funeral was held Tuesday. He formerly served as European director…
— King Mohammed VI of Morocco attended the rededication of the Ettedgui Synagogue in Casablanca. The synagogue and the adjacent El Mellah Museum, which retraces Jewish history in Morocco, were reopened Friday. They were restored as part of the second phase of a government program aimed at rehabilitating Casablanca’s old city. A government grant of about…
Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen has a uniquely Jewish put-down for Donald Trump’s pick to be Israel ambassador: “You’re no Tevye the milkman.” Of the 18 Jewish Democrats in the House of Representatives, four have already spoken out against the appointment of Friedman, a right-wing Orthodox bankruptcy lawyer best known for his unswerving support for West…
Long after Germans pulled down monuments to Nazi rule, there remained a forest outside Berlin that each fall would commemorate the Third Reich. Planted by an unknown person, the forest in the town of Zernikow was mostly evergreen pine trees. But a few strategically placed trees belonged to a different breed and would turn yellow…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel was looking into the possibility of bringing wounded refugees from the Syrian city of Aleppo to Israeli hospitals for treatment. Many wounded in Syria’s civil war have been brought discreetly across the Israeli-occupied Golan frontline to Israeli hospitals for the past three years, although Israel and…
— For years, left-wing Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua has been fighting for a Palestinian state. For years, right-wing Israeli politician Naftali Bennett has been fighting against one. But now they agree. Speaking to Israel’s Army Radio on Monday, Yehoshua made a shocking shift after nearly 50 years of peace activism: “It doesn’t make sense to talk…
— The company operating Prague’s subway is investigating a complaint alleging one of its employees threatened to “cut off the head” of a Jewish passenger wearing a kippah. The incident was reported last week by a member of Prague’s Bejt Simcha Reform Community, Petr Papousek, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic, told JTA Tuesday….
— Several incidents of red spray-painted swastikas and other hate incidents have been reported in neighborhoods on Long Island, New York. Police are investigating the incidents in the suburban neighborhoods through Dec. 16 as hate crimes, the New York Daily News reported. Among the places where the incidents occurred are the towns of Merrick and…
David Friedman has a way with words. Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel is already being slammed for calling liberal Jews “worse than kapos” in a column on a far-right website. Now, a November interview in which Friedman said that Senator Al Franken and others who accused the Trump campaign of anti-Semitism “sound…
Even a century after his death, the name Harry Houdini is synonymous with escapology, but less is known about his first great escape – how he left his Hungarian home as a child. The House of Houdini, a museum in Budapest’s historic Castle district, seeks to shed light on the illusionist’s roots with a display…
לויט אַ נײַ בוך פֿאָרשונגען האָבן טראַדיציאָנאַליסטן אין ביידע עדות געהאַלטן, אַז ייִדן מוזן אָפּהיטן זייער גערעדט לשון
100% of profits support our journalism
