Just months after a public battle over the trademark of the letter “J,” Jewish dating services JDate and JSwipe have kissed and coupled up. Spark Networks, owner of JDate and several other non-Jewish dating sites, announced on Wednesday that it had bought Smooch Labs, the company behind mobile dating app JSwipe. The purchase price will…
President Barack Obama on Friday condemned the recent outbreak of violence in Israel and urged Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to tamp down their rhetoric. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms violence directed against innocent people,” Obama said in a news conference. For two weeks, tensions about access to…
A rabbi has been sentenced to 22 years in prison after pleading guilty in Maryland to sexually abusing an underage girl, court documents showed. Rabbi Frederick Karp, 51, of Beachwood, Ohio, was sentenced by a Baltimore County Circuit Court judge on Thursday. His sentence includes five years of supervised probation after release. Karp pleaded guilty…
Israel on Friday rejected a Palestinian appeal for an international protection force for the al-Aqsa mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, saying the status quo was the only way to ensure stability in the region. The new Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, spoke to reporters ahead of a special meeting of the United…
Approximately 300 Jews and Arabs held hands in a chain in the central Galilee to call for reconciliation amidst Israel’s violence over the past few weeks. The symbolic gathering on Friday afternoon was organized by Givat Haviva, an educational organization that promotes Arab-Jewish coexistence. The group of Arabs and Jews assembled and held hands on…
Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Germany next week to discuss the recent spate of violence between Israel and Palestinians in which 39 people have been killed, the Israeli ambassador to Washington said on Friday. Kerry, who has said he planned to go to the Middle East soon…
Haredi Orthodox Jews will soon account for half of the British Jewish population, according to a study of the United Kingdom’s Jewish community. Accelerating birth rates among the strictly observant religious Jewish communities mean they are expected “to constitute a majority of the British Jewish population before the 21st century is over,” a report from…
The Swiss drug maker Novartis will invest an extra $15 million in Gamida Cell, an Israeli developer of stem cell therapies, Gamida said. Novartis last year invested $35 million in the company for a 15 percent stake, the Tachles Jewish weekly of Switzerland reported this week. The deal could reach $600 million if Novartis exercises…
The artists who produced Arabic graffiti seen in the latest episode of the TV series “Homeland,” which accuses the show of racism, said on Friday they were surprised at the impact of their protest but hoped it would get the producers to change their scripts. The hit show is about U.S. intelligence efforts to thwart…
Henry Krystal, a concentration camp survivor and Holocaust trauma expert, died on Oct. 8th at the age of 90. Krystal, a psychiatrist whose research focused on former concentration camp inmates, passed away at his home in Bloomfield, Michigan from complications caused by Parkinson’s disease, the New York Times reported. He is survived by his wife,…
A Palestinian posing as a journalist wounded an Israeli soldier with a knife before being shot dead, the Israeli military said. The attack took place near Hebron, in the southern part of the occupied territory. Reuters television footage showed the Palestinian surrounded by Israeli troops after the attack, rolling on the ground in a florescent…
