Nine more Druze Israelis were arrested in connection with an attack on an ambulance carrying wounded Syrians to Israeli hospitals, leaving one Syrian dead. The arrests reported on Tuesday by the Hebrew-language news website Walla bring the total number of arrests in two attacks on ambulances last month to 21. A gag order has been…
(JTA) — After facing criticism for its handling of inappropriate behavior by a convert-supervising rabbi who turned out to be a mikvah-peeping voyeur, the country’s main centrist Orthodox rabbinical group has released key guidelines aimed at preventing abuses during the conversion process. The Rabbinical Council of America is recommending that would-be converts be given a…
Burt Shavitz, the Jewish beekeeper and co-founder of the Burt’s Bees cosmetics company, has died. Shavitz, born Ingram Shavitz in Manhattan in 1935, died of respiratory problems in Bangor, Maine, on Sunday while surrounded by family and friends. He grew the Burt’s Bees company with business partner, Roxanne Quimby, and his scraggly, bearded image became…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked several European leaders to support the United Nations Human Rights Council report that slams Israel’s Gaza war actions, a British newspaper reported. Netanyahu called British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other “key allies” last Friday before the Human Rights Council vote later that day, according…
Jordan Farmar, a Jewish NBA player who won two league championships as a member of his hometown Los Angeles Lakers, is heading back to Israel to play for Maccabi Tel Aviv. Farmar, who is Jewish, played 16 games for Maccabi Tel Aviv during the NBA lockout of 2011. The 6-2 guard, a standout at UCLA,…
Mayors from several major U.S. cities have signed on to an initiative calling on American mayors to ask their European counterparts to condemn anti-Semitism. The Mayors United Against Anti-Semitism initiative, which was launched by the American Jewish Committee in May at its conference in Brussels, also urges the mayors to work to stop the recent…
Security guards prevented an American woman from entering the Western Wall plaza because she was wearing a kippah, the Women of the Wall group said. On Monday, guards and officials from the Western Wall Heritage Foundation asked the woman, identified only as Linda, who “authorized” her to wear a kippah, Women of the Wall said…
Hillary Rodham Clinton said she will speak out against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel during her presidential campaign. “I know you agree that we need to make countering BDS a priority,” Clinton said in a July 2 letter to Haim Saban, the Israeli-American entertainment mogul who has been a major fundraiser for…
Six Bedouin-Israelis, four of them teachers, were indicted for their support of the Islamic State jihadist group. Several of the men, from the Negev town of Hura, planned to join and fight with ISIS in Syria, Israel’s Shin Bet security service said in a Monday. The arrests took place over the last two months. The…
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin called on Israel’s Chief Rabbinate to dedicate itself to a more inclusive outlook on Israeli society. On Monday, in his first public remarks since the controversy over his tenure as chief rabbi of Efrat, Riskin said the Chief Rabbinate never attempted to reach out to him directly to explain the reason for…
A committee established by the Rabbinical Council of America to review its conversion processes has submitted its report featuring recommendations in nine areas of the process. The review was put in place nine months ago after one of the RCA’s leading conversion rabbis, Barry Freundel, was arrested on voyeurism charges. Freundel was sentenced to 6…
