(JTA) — To be married in Israel, immigrants must prove their Jewish ancestry to the country’s Chief Rabbinate. Couples can solicit a letter from their hometown rabbis or present their parents’ Jewish marriage contracts. Sometimes they even bring a Yiddish-speaking grandmother before a rabbinical court. In the end, every claim has to pass through one…
Jewish leaders in Budapest criticized the planned commemoration of victims of Germany’s occupation because it ignored Hungarians’ complicity in the Holocaust. The plan announced Thursday involves erecting a monument in Freedom Square situated in the Hungarian capital’s 5th district. The top official in the district is a member of the ruling Fidesz party. The Hungarian…
A U.S. State Department official in Cuba for migration talks praised on Friday the tone of current relations between the United States and Cuba, and visited jailed U.S. contractor Alan Gross during a three-day trip to the Communist-run island to demonstrate Washington’s concern over his plight. Edward Alex Lee, the U.S. acting deputy assistant secretary…
Bond rating agency Moody’s has once again downgraded Yeshiva University’s debt, this time to junk bond status. In a statement on January 9, Moody’s announced it was dropping the troubled Modern Orthodox institution’s rating to B1 from Baa2, saying that it might fall farther in the future. This marks the first time that Y.U.’s debt…
President Barack Obama on Friday nominated former Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer to be vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, and tapped two others to round out the U.S. central bank’s top ranks just as it begins winding down its historic economic stimulus. Fischer, an experienced crisis manager and one of the world’s most…
Supporters of the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne hijacked three French pro-Israel websites in a coordinated cyber attack. The attack Thursday paralyzed the websites Israel-Flash.com, Europe-Israel.org and liguedefensejuive.com, the website of the French Jewish Defense League, and replaced their content with messages of support for Dieudonne, Le Nouvel Observateur reported. On the hijacked websites, the hackers called…
The wife of a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli jail gave birth on Friday to a boy born from sperm smuggled into Gaza, her family said, the first successful pregnancy of its kind in the embattled coastal enclave. The procedure follows several similar cases last year in the West Bank, and Palestinians view such births…
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will both attend the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos this month, the organisers told Reuters on Friday. Asked about their attendance, a spokeswoman for the forum said: “Yes, it’s confirmed.” She declined to name other participants at the annual meeting. The…
For the second time in less than a month, Israel demanded clarifications from the Netherlands on Dutch firms’ divestment from Israel’s occupation. On Friday, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the ambassador to Israel of the Netherlands, Caspar Veldkamp, to provide clarifications on the decision of PGGM, a large pensions administrator, to divest from five…
Israel on Friday announced plans to build 1,400 new homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited the region to push peace talks in which settlements represent a major hurdle. Although widely expected, the announcement angered some of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own coalition…
A French court upheld a ban on a show scheduled in the central city of Tours for Friday by a comedian accused of insulting the memory of Holocaust victims, the second performance in a nationwide tour to be banned. A lawyer for comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala said he would seek to appeal the decision, which…
דער זומער איז אַן עקשן, ער וויל ניט, וויל ניט קומען, הגם אויף בייטן וואַקסן צעקווייטיקט שוין די בלומען.
