(JTA) — Itzhak Perlman, the Israeli-born violin virtuoso, was named the third winner of the Genesis Prize. Perlman joins former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the actor Michael Douglas as recipients of the annual $1 million prize that has been dubbed the “Jewish Nobel.” “I was totally dumbfounded,” Perlman told JTA about learning he…
The grandmother of the 6-year-old Jewish boy who was killed in the mass school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, criticized opponents of gun control legislation in a Washington Post Op-Ed on the event’s third anniversary. “Guns don’t kill; people do. Yes, that’s true. An open society can never protect itself completely from evil or insanity,” Marie-Claude…
Several hundred Jews in Istanbul participated in what is said to have been the city’s first public lighting of Hanukkah candles in decades. The ceremony took place on Sunday evening in Ortakoy, a neighborhood on the European banks of the Bosporus Straits. Leading the celebration was Isaac Ibrahimzadeh, the president of the Jewish Community of…
Israel’s Air Force struck two Hamas military posts in Gaza in retaliation for a rocket fired from the coastal strip at southern Israel. The rocket fired from Gaza on Sunday night, which caused sirens to sound in several southern Israeli communities, landed in an open area, causing no injuries, according to the Israel Defense Forces….
A baby was among 11 people injured in a car-ramming attack by a Palestinian driver at a Jerusalem bus stop. The 18-month-old boy was seriously injured and placed on life support, and an elderly woman was moderately injured on Monday afternoon when the driver slammed his car into people waiting at the stop near the…
Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull participated in the Hanukkah menorah lighting ceremony at Sydney’s Central Synagogue. Turnbull lit the shamash and held it during the blessings, passing it to Cantor Shimon Farkas to light the eight candles on Sunday night. The prime minister spoke to over 500 members of Sydney’s Central Synagogue community about the…
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said Sunday that the United States and Israel’s security relationship “has never been stronger.” Speaking at HaaretzQ, the Israeli newspaper’s daylong event with the New Israel Fund, she stressed U.S. efforts to defend Israel at the United Nations. “As you all know, the U.N. is a place…
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has named Rep. Ted Deutch, a fellow Democrat from Florida, to the governing council of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The mission of the museum has been your personal and official mission,” Pelosi, the minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, wrote in a Dec. 4 letter, which Deutch posted…
The family of Oron Shaul, the Israeli soldier who was killed during the 2014 Gaza war, called on Hamas to present evidence that their son, who has been declared dead, is still alive as Hamas claims. Shaul’s parents held a news conference on Sunday at their home in Poria Illit in the wake of the…
SZEKESFEHERVAR, Hungary — A U.S. envoy said on Sunday Washington was shocked by plans to erect a statue of Balint Homan, who contributed to murderous anti-Semitism in Hungary in the 1930s and 40s. “From the U.S. government perspective we feel very strongly that history and the damage that this man did to Hungarian citizens who…
The Reform movement expressed “deep disappointment” in the refusal of an Arab-Israeli lawmaker to enter a meeting with U.S. Jewish leaders because it was taking place in space shared by the Jewish Agency. “This was an opportunity for us to engage in the complexities of the issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the internal Jewish-Arab…
