(JTA) — Rabbi Daniel Alter expects some added fervency during daily prayer services at the Denver Academy of Torah in the days leading up to the Super Bowl. Alter, the academy’s head of school, recalls that when the Colorado Rockies faced the Boston Red Sox in the 2007 World Series, his students were more focused…
Israel’s finance minister halted the transfer of government funds to West Bank Jewish settlements on Saturday and ordered a probe into allegations that money meant to support municipalities had been funnelled to a pro-settler political group. The money in question had been earmarked to cover security and building maintenance fees that were incurred when Israel…
Austrian actor Maximilian Schell, who won an Academy Award for his role as a German defence attorney in the 1961 film “Judgment at Nuremberg”, has died aged 83. The Vienna-born actor died overnight at a clinic in Innsbruck as the result of a “sudden and serious illness”, his agent, Patricia Baumbauer, told the Austria Press…
Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday that he remains hopeful that the Obama administration’s effort to broker a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians can succeed. The United States hopes to complete a “framework” accord in coming weeks and will then try to negotiate a final peace deal by the end of 2014,…
Two prominent Southern California Democrats – a Taiwan-born state senator and former Los Angeles controller Wendy Greuel – have jumped into the race to fill a congressional seat being vacated by the retirement of veteran Rep. Henry Waxman. Veteran Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a longtime Jewish leader and political ally of Waxman who…
Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system on Friday shot down a rocket fired at the Red Sea resort city of Eilat, an occasional target of militants in Egypt’s lawless Sinai peninsula. “The Iron Dome system intercepted a rocket fired at Eilat,” an Israeli military spokeswoman said. “It was probably launched from Sinai.” Earlier this month…
The former New Jersey Republican official at the center of a political retribution scandal dogging Governor Chris Christie said on Friday the governor knew about a traffic jam orchestrated by his top aides, the New York Times reported. David Wildstein, who is Jewish, said he had evidence that proves Christie had knowledge of the lane…
Italian police have identified a far-right radical they suspect of sending pigs heads last week to Rome’s Grand Synagogue, Israeli embassy and a museum with a Holocaust exhibition, authorities said on Friday. Police said the 29-year-old Roman, whom they did not name, had links to far-right political groups and planned to found a new one….
A French court nullified an honorary title conferred on the murderer of an Israeli diplomat. The administrative court of Montreuil on Thursday nullified the honorary residency that the suburb of Bagnolet conferred on Georges Abdallah, according to a report published on Friday by the Le Figaro daily. Abdallah, a pro-Palestinian militant, was sentenced to life…
Watching old Arab enemies reel with sectarian insurgencies and international diplomacy capping the Iranian nuclear drive, Israel’s military is confounded by a new challenge: quiet. The relative tranquility, for Israel at least, poses its own dilemma for commanders tasked with preparing for an array of potentially unpredictable future adversaries while trying to stave off steep…
Detroit’s Jewish federation has hired an accounting firm to investigate possible financial irregularities at the local Jewish Community Center. In addition to hiring tax and auditing firm to conduct a “forensic investigation” of the center, the federation retained a separate firm to take over the center’s financial operations of the center, the Detroit Free Press…
