Several hundred French Jews including dozens of community leaders have called for the re-election of a chief rabbi of France within three months. The community leaders made the call in a letter they sent last month to Joel Mergui, the president of the Consistoire – the French Jewish institution responsible for providing religious services, the…
An Israeli government committee approved an amendment which would allow same-sex couples and singles to have babies using a surrogate in Israel. The Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved the amendment to the existing surrogacy law on Sunday by a vote of 7 to 5. Under the current law, only heterosexual couples can arrange to have…
The United States will have a “limited” ability to manage the “international fallout” on Israel if it does not make peace with the Palestinians, President Obama said. “The absence of international goodwill makes you less safe,” Obama told Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg during an interview in the Oval Office, which was published Sunday afternoon. “The condemnation…
A documentary about Alice Herz-Sommer, the 110-year-old Holocaust survivor who died last weekend, has won the Academy Award for best short documentary. “The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life” is a 38-minute film about Herz-Sommer’s use of music to survive the death camps. In accepting the Oscar, the film’s director, Malcolm Clarke, said…
A Greek doctor who posted a “Jews Not Welcome” sign outside his office was arrested for inciting racial hatred. The doctor, a 57-year-old neurologist from Thessaloniki, also was charged with weapons possession and pro-Nazi beliefs, according to the Greek Reporter. The sign was written in German. The doctor, who has not been named, is a…
Religious communities in Ukraine, including the Jewish community, called on Russia to “stop its aggression against Ukraine” and pull out its troops. The religious communities also appealed to the international community, including the United States, Great Britain, the European Union, the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, to “stop foreign…
A two-volume set of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” inscribed by Hitler sold at an auction in Los Angeles for $64,850. The books, from 1925 and 1926, were sold Thursday to an anonymous U.S. buyer. They were inscribed to Josef Bauer, one of the first members of the Nazi party. There were 11 bids for the…
The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC opened its annual conference with an appeal for bipartisanship. “Bipartisanship is essential,” Michael Kassen, the board chairman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said Sunday in his opening statement to the conference, which drew a record 14,000 activists. “We must affirm bipartisanship in our own ranks if we want support…
An Israeli soldier who lost his arm in a Hamas terror attack proposed to his girlfriend from the stage of a Friends of the IDF event in Florida. Capt. Ziv Shilon proposed on Thursday in front of about 1,000 people at the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces’ Greater Miami Chapter Solidarity Gala in Hollywood….
The number of anti-Semitic attacks recorded in France last year decreased by 31 percent over the previous year, the French Jewish community’s watchdog on anti-Semitism said. In its annual report released Sunday, the SPCJ security organization counted a total of 423 anti-Semitic incidents in 2013 compared to 614 in 2012. However, the figure for 2013…
Thousands of haredi Orthodox men have gathered at the entrance to Jerusalem as part of a mass prayer rally and protest against a bill that would require yeshiva students to serve in the military. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to take part in the protest, dubbed the “million man protest,” which was set…
