(JTA) — Kapparot, the pre-Yom Kippur folk custom of swinging a chicken around one’s head as a way of purging sin, is one of those Jewish practices that doesn’t always, ahem, dovetail with 21st-century mores. The ritual has often encountered clucks of disapproval, and this High Holiday season is no different. In the United States…
A Nashville synagogue has offered its facility as a venue for a Planned Parenthood event in the wake of a city JCC backing out of an agreement to host. Congregation Ohabai Sholom, also known as The Temple, reached out to Planned Parenthood of Middle & East Tennessee after learning of the Gordon Jewish Community Center’s…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will receive an award from a conservative think tank on the same day that he meets with President Barack Obama. Netanyahu will receive the American Enterprise Institute’s 2015 Irving Kristol Award on the evening of Nov. 9. He will be meeting with Obama during the day at the White House…
An ex-teacher at a Jewish school in Russia on trial for inciting racial hatred told his students to “kill the Germans,” one of his former 12-year-old students testified. The student testifying in the trial of Semen Tykman, who taught at the Or Avner Jewish school in Yekaterinburg, also said the teacher told the class he…
The Anti-Defamation League denounced Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson’s suggestion that a Muslim should not be allowed to serve as president. The ADL denounced the remarks, which Carson made on national television Sunday as “deeply offensive, un-American and contrary to the Constitution.” “There is no religious litmus test for candidates seeking political office, and that…
Two U.S. Jewish organizations said the Obama administration’s offer to absorb at least 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year was inadequate. “Increasing the total number of refugees from 70,000 to 85,000 for next year and to 100,000 for the year after is a nice symbolic gesture,” Mark Hetfield, the president of HIAS, a Jewish…
Two Jews were shot with BB guns in a heavily Orthodox neighborhood of New York City. City Councilman Rory Lancman said that the victims, neither of whom was seriously injured, were shot over the past 10 days in the Kew Gardens Hills section of Queens, the Queens Chronicle reported Monday. The New York Police Department…
The Reconstructionist movement is organizing a Yom Kippur service at the Lincoln Memorial timed for Pope Francis’ visit to Washington and tailored to his climate change message. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Jewish Reconstructionist communities are cosponsoring the event on the National Mall. Philadelphia’s Shalom Center is organizing the event. The services Tuesday night and…
Montreal’s main Jewish federation has apologized for posting an article containing Jewish stereotypes on a non-Jewish website. Federation CJA pulled its supposedly tongue-in-cheek article — “10 Realities of Having a Jewish Best Friend in Montreal” — from the MTLBlog, a commercial website for young people, several days after receiving complaints from members of the Jewish…
(JTA) — Even at his remote sheep pasture in the Austrian countryside, Hans Breuer was too disturbed by the plight of the Syrian refugees streaming into his country to go about his daily routine. Especially troubling to Breuer, a 61-year-old Jewish shepherd and singer of Yiddish songs, were the overcrowded conditions at Traiskirchen — a…
The Vatican flag will be raised for the first time at the United Nations on Friday morning ahead of Pope Francis’ visit to the world body, the Holy See mission to the United Nations said on Monday. Pope Francis is due to address the United Nations in New York on Friday during his first visit…
