The rabbi of the Western Wall apologized that a woman was turned away from the holy site for wearing a kippah, but said he was not familiar with the incident. Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch said in a statement issued Tuesday that if the incident did occur, the response was incorrect. Rabinovitch also said that the Israel…
Mr. Burns” will be back. After negotiating a new deal, Harry Shearer is in fact returning to “The Simpsons,” Variety has confirmed. Under the new pact, Shearer will continue to lend his voice to the characters of Mr. Burns, Ned Flanders, Waylon Smithers and Principal Skinner on the long-running Fox series through Seasons 27 and…
(JTA) — Back in 1991, as he was led away from the courtroom, convicted child molester Frank Beck shouted out an accusation against one of the most prominent British Jews. Greville Janner, a former leader of British Jewry and lawmaker for the Labour Party, Beck screamed, was his eager accomplice in the sexual exploitation of…
Fragments of about 100 tombstones from a Jewish cemetery destroyed by the Nazis were removed from a riverbed in Poland. Archaeologists removed the tombstone fragments from the Warta River, located in Mstow, Silesia, on the border with the Czech Republic, Radio Poland reported Tuesday. The discovery of the fragments, identified by Hebrew-language inscriptions and Jewish…
Come Yom Kippur, the chickens of Crown Heights and Boro Park may still have their heads — if an activist group gets its way. A new lawsuit filed by a group of agitated Brooklyn residents against four rabbis, several Hasidic congregations and New York City takes aim at Kapparot, the Jewish ritual where chickens are…
(JTA) — There’s some tantalizingly interesting material in the final report of a committee charged with reviewing the way the Rabbinical Council of America, the country’s main Orthodox rabbinical association, deals with conversion. Much comes from a survey of 439 Orthodox converts that provides the first-ever statistics about American Orthodox converts. Some comes from a survey…
Authorities searched the Indiana home of Subway sandwich chain pitchman Jared Fogle on Tuesday, about two months after the executive director of his foundation was arrested on federal child pornography charges, local media reported. Fogle, well known from his appearances on Subway television commercials, was detained outside his home in the town of Zionsville as…
A Croatian Holocaust survivor who worked as a producer on “Schindler’s List” will give his Oscar from the movie to Yad Vashem. Branko Lustig, 83, a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, said that the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem “is the place where the award should be kept after my death,” Ynet…
Iran and major powers will continue negotiations on an historic nuclear deal past Tuesday’s deadline for a long-term agreement, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said. “We are continuing to negotiate for the next couple of days. This does not mean we are extending our deadline,” Mogherini told reporters. The deal under discussion between…
Israel’s Religious Services Minister David Azoulay said in an interview that Reform Jews cannot be considered Jews. “A Reform Jew, from the moment he stops following Jewish law, I cannot allow myself to say that he is a Jew,” Azoulay, of the Sephardic Orthodox Shas Party, said Tuesday morning on Army Radio. “These are Jews…
Palestinians young and old have jumped on a trend for taking “selfies” at Al Aqsa, the 8th century Muslim shrine in Jerusalem, both as a personal memento and for relatives prevented from visiting the ancient compound. While selfies are hardly new, Palestinians have embraced the phenomenon during the holy month of Ramadan as a way…
