(JTA) — The Israeli government has adopted a major reform expected to ease the path to conversion for hundreds of thousands of Israelis now prohibited from marrying in the Jewish state. In the most significant response in decades to the estimated 400,000 Israelis who are not considered Jewish by the Chief Rabbinate, the Cabinet expanded authority…
A Jerusalem planning committee approved the construction of hundreds of apartments in a Jewish neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem. On Monday, the city’s District Planning and Building Committee backed the building of 500 apartments in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood. The plan is reported to be in response to Palestinian violence in Jerusalem in recent months. The…
World Jewish Congress leader Ronald Lauder warned a Swiss museum to turn down the collection of masterpieces bequeathed to it from the Cornelius Gurlitt collection. Lauder in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine published Saturday said the Kunstmuseum Bern would “trigger an avalanche of lawsuits” from potential claimants should it take the 20th century masterpieces….
Syria’s official news agency, SANA, has launched a Hebrew-language website to reach Israeli readers. The website went live Sunday and joins existing pages in Arabic, French, Russian, Turkish, Chinese and Spanish. Khalid al-Hamad, the editor and translator of the Hebrew page, said in a statement that the new website will expose Israel’s involvement in the…
Loyola University Chicago has determined that the campus chapters of both Hillel and Students for Justice in Palestine violated university rules. A board of Loyola administrators ruled Friday that both organizations had broken the rules in a campus incident on Sept. 9, an announcement issued by the university said. In the incident, members of Students…
The case of the disputed Sherlock Holmes copyright is hereby closed after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left intact a ruling that said 50 works featuring the famed fictional detective are in the public domain. The high court’s justices, which like the eccentric detective get to decide which cases to tackle, declined to hear…
An Israeli government committee on Monday advanced plans for 500 settler homes in East Jerusalem, an official said, in the face of disapproval from the United States at construction on occupied Palestinian land. The Interior Ministry panel’s preliminary approval of the new homes for Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood built on West Bank territory captured in…
(Reuters) — The U.S. Supreme Court appeared closely divided on Monday as it considered whether Congress overstepped its authority in passing a law designed to allow American citizens born in Jerusalem to have Israel listed as their birthplace on passports. Congress passed the law in 2002 but the government has never enforced it. Seeking to…
A passenger on a London bus who shouted anti-Semitic epithets was given a 16-week prison sentence. Ian Campbell, 42, of London pleaded guilty last month to a racially aggravated public order offense. He was sentenced in Magistrates Court in Hendon last week, the London-based Jewish Chronicle reported Friday. He also was sentenced to four weeks…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jordanian King Abdullah II reportedly met secretly to discuss tension in Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount. The meeting took place Saturday in Amman, the Kuwaiti Arabic-language daily Al-Jarida reported Monday citing “well-informed sources.” The two sides pledged to work together to ease the tensions in Jerusalem and the…
A member of Russia’s Human Rights Council condemned a news website that said that nearly a quarter of Russia’s top billionaires are Jews. Nikolai Svanidze of the council – a Kremlin-affiliated body with no executive powers –- made the condemnation last week against Lenta.ru, which analyzed according to faith and ethnicity the Forbes Magazine list…
