President Barack Obama on Friday said Sony Pictures “made a mistake” in pulling the Seth Rogen satirical film “The Interview” after suffering a devastating cyberattack blamed on North Korea. “I wish they (Sony) would have spoken to me first,” Obama said at a news conference. “I would have told them, ‘Do not get into a…
A French mayor with ties to the far-right National Front party lit a menorah in city hall despite protests that doing so violated the separation of church and state. Robert Menard of Beziers, who was elected mayor earlier this year, lit the menorah Tuesday, the first night of Hanukkah, at the seat of his municipality,…
In advance of the second round of Tunisia’s presidential elections, the head of the country’s Jewish community endorsed the campaign of secularist hopeful Beji Caid Essebsi. Joseph Roger Bismuth, president of the Jewish Community of Tunisia, or CJT, gave Essebsi his support in an interview published Thursday by the news site AfricanManager.com ahead of the…
President Obama signed into law a bill that ends Social Security payments to former Nazis. The “No Social Security for Nazis Act” Obama signed Thursday was passed unanimously by both chambers in Congress earlier this month. The measure closes a loophole that had allowed ex-Nazis who lied about their past when immigrating to the United…
Chabad set up a menorah in downtown Sydney as a tribute to the victims of a terrorist attack. The 32-foot menorah was erected late Thursday night in downtown Sydney, just hours after Chabad cancelled its annual candle-lighting ceremony in the wake of the terror attack that killed ended with three people, including the assailant, killed….
At a public lighting of Hanukkah candles, Amsterdam’s acting mayor urged Jews to celebrate their faith openly to counter rising levels of anti-Semitism. “The answer to intolerance lies precisely in demonstrating freedom of worship and of expression,” Eric van der Burg said Tuesday, lighting the first candle of the holiday. Gesturing toward the three-foot menorah…
A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip exploded in a kibbutz near Gaza without causing casualties or damage. The rocket that exploded Friday morning was the third Palestinian terrorists fired at Israel since the end of Israel’s 50-day assault on Hamas in Gaza, Army Radio reported. The operation, launched by Israel after rocket launches from…
(Reuters) — The comedy on the fictional assassination of North Korea’s leader is “desperately unfunny” and would have flopped overseas if it had not been canceled, according to leaked e-mails of international executives of Sony Pictures. Sony Corp scrapped its Christmas Day release of “The Interview,” following threats by hackers who have leaked internal company documents…
Ari Roth, the longtime director at Theater J, is leaving the theater after a period of tension over plays dealing with Israel’s history. The Washington Post and the Washington Jewish Week each reported late Thursday that Roth is saying the Washington DC Jewish Community Center, which oversees the theater, fired him after he refused to…
Security guards at the Western Wall entrance confiscated menorahs from several women, but dozens held a candle-lighting ceremony in the women’s section. The guards said they were acting on orders from Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbinic authority of the Western Wall and holy places, the Women of the Wall organization said Thursday night in a…
A lawsuit arising out of allegations of voyeurism at a Washington D.C. ritual bath added the Rabbinical Council of America as a defendant. The lawsuit, filed earlier this month by a third-year student at Georgetown University’s law school, initially named as defendants Rabbi Barry Freundel’s Washington synagogue, Kesher Israel, the adjacent mikvah and her own…
