Pope Francis crossed the Tiber River to visit Rome’s Great Synagogue Sunday. His 1.5-mile journey to the towering Tempio Maggiore shows that what was once unthinkable is now the norm. “Our meeting,” Rome Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni said, “aims to convey a very topical, important and urgent message — that belonging to a faith,…
Israel bristled on Sunday at the lifting of international sanctions on Iran and vowed to flag up any violations of its arch-foe’s nuclear restrictions while drawing on U.S. defense aid to prepare for a possible military face-off in the future. The International Atomic Energy Agency on Saturday ruled Iran had abided by last July’s deal…
Days after the American Historical Association decisively rejected a resolution denouncing Israel, the Washington D.C.-based Association of American Universities reaffirmed its opposition to boycotts against Israeli academic institutions. In a statement issued Thursday, the AAU said it was re-issuing its executive committee’s 2013 statement on boycotts because the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association…
A focus of liberal Jewish advocacy group J Street this year will be unseating Republican senators in Illinois and Wisconsin who led opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. “We see Mark Kirk and Ron Johnson as two of our biggest targets,” Ben Shnider, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group’s political director told JTA Friday…
JERUSALEM — Israel ordered a high-priority police investigation on Sunday into anti-Christian messages scrawled in Hebrew on the walls and doors of a Jerusalem monastery, saying they marked an assault on religious harmony. “Idols will be extirpated” – a line lifted from the Jewish prayer service – and “Christians Go to Hell” were among graffiti…
CHARLESTON, S.C. – Tightening polls and rising tensions between White House rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders could fuel a fiery Democratic debate on Sunday, their last face-to-face encounter until Iowa kicks off the presidential nominating race in two weeks. The leading Democratic contenders stepped up their attacks on each other during the past week,…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Sunday Israel would stay vigilant as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani hailed the nuclear deal that has led to the lifting of crippling economic sanctions. Rouhani said the end of sanctions is a “golden page” in Iran’s history, and looked forward to an economic future less dependent on oil as the…
The day before the Obama administration was due to slap new sanctions on Iran late last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warned U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry the move could derail a prisoner deal the two sides had been negotiating in secret for months. Kerry and other top aides to President Barack Obama,…
Iran freed four Americans including a Washington Post reporter on Saturday in a prisoner swap, as diplomats gathered to announce the lifting of international sanctions and bring the country of 80 million people back to the global economic stage. The International Atomic Energy Agency was expected to announce in Vienna that Tehran had complied with…
The death certificate of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — the revered Chabad leader often referred to as “the Rebbe” — is on the auction block. The official certificate, issued Aug. 2, 1995, and mailed by the New York Department of Health to Schneerson’s niece in Israel, is being auctioned by Virtual Judaica on its website…
School authorities in a Maryland county that straddles the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore suburbs decided against removing Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah from the academic calendar. The Howard County Board of Education has given staff and pupils the two major Jewish holidays off since 1979. In recent years, the board has come under pressure to…
