Michael Oren, the former Israeli envoy to the United States, will run in Israel’s upcoming elections. Oren was presented Wednesday as a candidate for the new political party Kulanu, headed by former Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon, who left the Likud Party in 2013. Kahlon said Oren would help retain good relations with Israel’s allies. “Michael…
Argentina’s president adopted a Jewish godson under a law intended to counteract an old legend about werewolves. President Christina Fernandez described in seven tweets her meeting with her new godson, Yair Tawil, a member of a Chabad-Lubavitch family. He was adopted as a godson under a law passed in the 1920s. The law was passed…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wished Christians in Israel and throughout the world a Merry Christmas. In a videotaped message, Netanyahu noted that Christians throughout the Middle East are subject to persecution, except in Israel. “Christian communities across the Middle East are experiencing a particularly difficult time. They’re experiencing violence, persecution and fear,” Netanyahu said….
Israel returned the bodies of two terrorists who killed five worshippers in an attack on a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem. The bodies were transferred to their families on Thursday, more than a month after attack during morning worship services at Bnei Torah Kehillat Yaakov, which left four rabbis and a police…
A firebomb attack on a car in the occupied West Bank left an an 11-year-old Israeli girl severely burned and her father injured on Thursday, the Israeli military said. The Israeli military said the suspected Palestinian attack was near the Ma’ale Shomron Jewish settlement, north of the West Bank city of Nablus. Video footage of…
Rabbi Leonard Beerman, famed for his unremitting pacifism and fight against injustice, has died. Beerman, who grew the congregation of Leo Baeck Temple from a small community of 28 members when he arrived in 1949 into one of the most prominent synagogues in Los Angeles, died on Dec. 24 at the age of 93. “With…
Israeli authorities approved hundreds of new units for Jewish settlers in east Jerusalem. The approvals were issued on Wednesday for the neighborhoods of Ramot and Har Homa, though reports varied in the Israeli media on the number of units approved. The Times of Israel reported that 243 new units had been approved for Ramot along…
Vandals desecrated the Jewish cemetery in the central Greek city of Larissa, spraying swastikas and threats on the cemetery wall. A swastika was sprayed on the gates of the cemetery, while the word “Juden,” the Nazi SS symbol, and the epithet “six million more” were scrawled on the cemetery walls, the Jewish community there said…
(JTA) — While chestnuts roast on open fires elsewhere in Dallas, another holiday tradition beckons for some of the city’s Jews: the Christmas Day Classic recreational football game. The first such game took place in 1964, when 16 teenage boys were looking for a diversion on an otherwise uneventful day. Now those “boys” are in…
A Los Angeles judge has declined a bid from attorneys for Roman Polanski to close the 1977 child sex case against the Oscar-winning director, a court spokeswoman said on Wednesday. The decision by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Brandlin on Tuesday is the latest defeat for the filmmaker in having the case dismissed without…
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced it has settled claims with a company that employed Alan Gross, the contractor freed last week after five years in a Cuban jail as part of a major shift in U.S.-Cuba relations. USAID finalized the settlement with Development Alternatives, Inc (DAI) on Monday night for $3.2 million,…
