In the city’s first rabbinic ordination since before World War II, four rabbis and three cantors were ordained at a ceremony in the White Stork synagogue in Wroclaw, Poland. Germany’s foreign minister and other dignitaries attended the ceremony Tuesday. The new clergy graduated from the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam, Germany, a Reform rabbinic seminary…
Comic-book artist Stan Goldberg, the color designer for Marvel Comics’ classic superheroes, has died. Goldberg, known to comic-book fans as “Stan G,” died Sunday at Cavalry Hospital in the Bronx. He was 82. He was inducted into the National Cartoonists Society Hall of Fame and awarded with its Gold Key Award in 2012. Goldberg started…
The United States on Tuesday took the unusual step of publicly criticizing Israel for plans to appropriate land in the occupied West Bank and calling for it to reverse the decision. Some 400 hectares (988 acres) in the Etzion Jewish settlement bloc near Bethlehem were declared “state land, on the instructions of the political echelon”…
(Reuters) – The Islamic State militant group released a video purporting to show the beheading of U.S. hostage Steven Sotloff, the SITE monitoring service reported on Tuesday. A masked figure in the video also issued a threat against a British hostage, a man the group named as David Haines, and warned governments to back off…
Some 300,000 people with physical or mental disabilities who were killed under Nazi Germany’s “euthanasia” program because their lives were deemed unworthy were commemorated on Tuesday with the opening of a memorial in Berlin. Relatives of the victims joined Mayor Klaus Wowereit and members of the public to lay wreaths and white roses in front…
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went on trial for the second time in the Talansky Affair, the bribery case which led to his resignation in 2008. Olmert’s retrial, ordered last month by Israel’s Supreme Court, began with a hearing Tuesday in Jerusalem District Court. The Supreme Court said it will allow new testimony from…
Parents and teachers at a secular public school in Beit Shemesh are protesting the partitioning of half of the building for a haredi Orthodox girls’ school. A floor for the building was separated for use by the school, called Mishkenot Daat, and city construction workers erected an 8-foot-high wall down the middle of the schoolyard…
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat will present plans to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday calling for a time table on ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Palestinian officials said. Erekat and intelligence chief Majid Faraj will hold a series of meetings with senior officials in Washington in which…
Syrian rebels have issued a list of demands for the release of United Nations peacekeepers stationed on the Golan Heights between Syria and Israel. The 45 Fijian troops from the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force have been held captive for five days in an unknown location. The rebels from the Nusra Front, which has ties…
Former U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is joining a Wall Street investment bank as vice-chairman and managing director. Cantor, 51, who served as the Republican congressman for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, also will be elected to the board of directors of the global investment bank, Moelis & Company, the bank announced Tuesday. Cantor will…
Jews in Turkey are under no obligation to comment on Israel’s operation in Gaza, a group of Jewish intellectuals in Turkey said. The open letter issued Friday was in response to calls for the Jewish community to denounce the operation, as well as a campaign claiming the Jews of Turkey are responsible for Israel’s actions…
