Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has expressed discomfort with the appointment of a former settler leader as Israel’s ambassador to her country. Rousseff sent a backchannel message to Israel with her concerns that accepting Dani Dayan will signal “support for the settlement enterprise,” the Hebrew-language news website Ynet reported Sunday. An official Brazilian refusal to accept…
Pope Francis’ visit to the White House will coincide with Yom Kippur, meaning that no rabbis likely will be in attendance at the arrival ceremony. More than 10,000 guests are expected at the ceremony, the Washington Post reported, adding that D.C.-area Jews on their way to synagogue will face traffic jams. “The Holy Father has…
Jackie Collins, whose steamy novels sold more than 500 million copies, has died following a six-year battle with breast cancer that she never divulged to the public. Collins, the daughter of a Jewish father and an Anglican mother, died Saturday in Los Angeles. She was 77. Her best-selling novels, mostly depicting the lives of women…
A conservative Jewish publication may drop conservative political pundit Ann Coulter’s column in the wake of her tweet slamming Republican candidates for pandering to “f—ing Jews.” The founder of the online Jewish World Review, Binyamin Jolkovsky, told the Daily Beast that he has reached out to Coulter but that she had not responded as of…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for harsher minimum sentences for rock throwers at the weekly Cabinet meeting. Netanyahu also asserted that Israel is committed to maintaining the status quo on the Temple Mount, but added that bringing explosives and pipe bombs onto the Temple Mount “is changing the status quo.” Police in Jerusalem over…
Rockets fired from the Gaza Strip targeted southern Israeli communities. One rocket fired Friday evening landed in Sderot in southern Israel, reportedly damaging a bus and a private home. Later Friday night a rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system over Ashkelon. Code red alarms sounded in southern Israel in advance of…
The mayor of Reykjavik, the capital city of Iceland, has walked back a city council decision to boycott all Israeli products. Only goods produced in “occupied areas” will be boycotted by the city council, Mayor Dagur Eggertsson told the Icelandic national broadcaster RUV, the English-language Iceland Monitor reported Saturday. The mayor said he would recommend…
The body of an Israeli man who was missing in Uman since Rosh Hashanah was found floating in a river near the grave of the founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement. Amir Ohana, 28, was found Saturday by volunteers from the ZAKA rescue and recovery organization. He was wearing his Shabbat clothes but without shoe…
The Gordon Jewish Community Center in Nashville, Tennessee, canceled a rental agreement allowing the local Planned Parenthood chapter to hold a fundraiser on its property. The JCC decision to revoke the agreement with the family-planning group and abortion provider, which has come under attack from Republicans, came in response to “apparent pressures from some of…
A German court is waiting for medical clearance before trying a 93-year-old former Auschwitz guard on 170,000 counts of accessory to murder. If Reinhold Hanning is determined mentally competent to stand trial, it will be the second trial this year of an ex-Nazi over the age of 90. Anke Grudda, spokeswoman for the Detmold state…
The new leader of Britain’s Labor party who has been accused of tolerating anti-Semitism said he has some Jewish ancestry. Jeremy Corbyn told The Church Times that while his immediate family is Christian, he has a “Jewish element” in his background, the United Kingdom’s Jewish News reported. In the interview with the Christian publication, he…
