(JTA) — Rabbis in Vienna condemned the chief rabbi of Russia for meeting the head of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party. Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar met this week with Heinz-Christian Strache and his delegation at his office in Moscow, the UK Jewish News reported. The meeting came two weeks after the Freedom Party candidate for…
(JTA) — A rabbi and his family have moved to South Dakota, giving the state its only full-time rabbi. Rabbi Mendel and Mussie Alperowitz and their children arrived on Dec. 24 in Sioux Falls, where they will open a Chabad center. The rabbi, who moved from Brooklyn, visited the state twice before deciding to move…
(JTA) — A six-foot tall, 100 pound menorah was stolen from a park in San Francisco. The menorah, which is owned by the local Chabad, had been installed in San Francisco’s Washington Square Park two weeks ago, the San Francisco Gate reported. It was reported stolen on Sunday, and had been lit on Saturday night….
(JTA) — A large menorah and a Holocaust memorial were damaged at a synagogue in Sun City, Arizona. The attack on Temple Beth Shalom is being investigated by the local sheriff’s office, though it has not been classified a hate crime, local media is reporting. The damage was discovered on Sunday morning, the first day…
SANTA MONICA, California (JTA) – Police are investigating a vandalism attack on a Chabad center in Santa Monica. Unknown persons smeared feces and rice on the window of the Living Torah Center on Wilshire Blvd., either late Saturday night or early Sunday, the first day of Hanukkah. Rabbi Boruch Rabinowitz discovered the defacement when he opened the center…
Donald Trump on Monday chided the United Nations as “sad,” just days after the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements despite pressure by the U.S. president-elect for a veto by Washington. “The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to…
Vera Rubin, a U.S. astronomer who pioneered work on invisible dark matter in the universe and who some colleagues felt was overlooked for a Nobel Prize, has died at 88, her son said on Monday. Rubin died on Sunday at an assisted living facility in Princeton, New Jersey, and had suffered from dementia for several…
(JTA) — Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner and their three young children lit Hanukkah candles on their vacation in Hawaii. Trump tweeted a photo of her family lighting their menorahs on the first night of Hanukkah. This year is one of the rare and special occasions where Hanukkah and Christmas coincide. Merry Christmas & Happy…
(JTA) — Anti-Jewish and anti-Roma graffiti were drawn in black marker on the front gate and the mailbox of a suburban Paris Jewish school named for teenage Holocaust diarist Anne Frank. The graffiti on the Anne Frank School in Montreuil, an eastern suburb of Paris, was discovered on Sunday afternoon, the French daily Le Parisian…
(JTA) — The kingdom of Bahrain hosted a candlelighting ceremony for Hanukkah, which led to a video of local men wearing kaffiyehs and Orthodox Jews dancing together. The Muslim monarchy of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa held a candle lighting ceremony on Saturday night attended by the local Jewish community, area businessmen and other…
Benjamin Netanyahu has been unrelenting in his criticism of the Obama administration over what he condemned as its “shameful” decision not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a halt to Israeli settlement-building. But with the clock ticking down on Barack Obama’s presidency, a possibly more amenable Republican Donald Trump waiting in the…
