— A Pennsylvania man who for years traveled the country giving speeches and media interviews about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor acknowledged that he had been lying and apologized. In a letter published Thursday on the LancasterOnline news site, Joseph Hirt, of Lancaster County said he lied not for personal gain but in hopes of raising…
NEW YORK — A prostitute allegedly hired by New York Jewish businessmen to entertain several New York police officers as part of an alleged bribery scheme said she performed multiple sex acts for them on a flight to Las Vegas and was treated so poorly she quit the profession. The alleged hire of Gabi Grecko…
— A Kansas City man has been charged with threatening a synagogue in suburban Overland Park. According to the Kansas City Star, prosecutors accused Brian Wachter, 40, of making an unspecified threat on May 31 against Congregation Beth Shalom. A Conservative synagogue, Beth Shalom has roots dating back to 1878, according to its website. It…
WASHINGTON — Marc Allan Feldman, a candidate for the Libertarian presidential nomination who pitched his candidacy citing Jewish lore, was found dead in a hotel. Feldman, a Cleveland Clinic doctor, was found in a Cleveland area motel on Wednesday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. He was 56. Coroners have yet to list a cause. The…
— A car-ramming outside the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, lightly injured two Israelis, in an apparent terror attack. The assailant, a Palestinian woman, was shot dead by a soldier at the scene Friday. The two Israeli victims, a couple in their 50s, had pulled over to the side of the road…
— A $400 million gift to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, earmarked in large part for water research, is believed to be the largest-ever bequest on behalf of an Israeli university. The university’s American fundraising organization announced the gift by the estate of Dr. Howard and Lottie Marcus of San Diego, California, on June 24. Lottie…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Bernie Sanders said he would vote for Hillary Clinton in November, but was not ready to endorse her. Sanders, the Independent Vermont senator, CNN and MSNBC on Friday morning that his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination would get his vote. “In all likelihood, it will go to Hillary Clinton,” he said…
WASHINGTON — Two delegates to the Democratic Party’s platform drafting committee — one appointed by Hillary Clinton and the other by Bernie Sanders — said the platform must reflect the hardships faced both by Israelis and Palestinians. “Israelis today live in fear of acts of terror that can turn peaceful marketplaces and neighborhoods into scenes…
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of spreading a blood libel in his address Thursday to the European Parliament in Brussels. In the speech, which earned a standing ovation from parliament representatives, Abbas alleged that Israeli rabbis called this week for the poisoning of Palestinian water, a medieval anti-Semitic libel…
The guitar riff Led Zeppelin used in the 1971 classic “Stairway to Heaven” differed substantially from one the English band was accused of stealing from the U.S. group Spirit, a jury found on Thursday in a copyright infringement trial in Los Angeles. The decision was a victory for Led Zeppelin, one of the top selling…
RIO DE JANEIRO — Venezuela’s Jewish community has certified the authenticity of a 200-year-old mikvah, or ritual bath, found in 2013 during restoration work on a museum. The president of the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Venezuela, Omar Vielma, said the finding in Coro near the Alberto Henriquez Museum marks a precedent to preserve the site…
