A federal judge reprimanded an attorney working on behalf of jailed former Agriprocessors executive Sholom Rubashkin. In a meeting Tuesday, U.S. District Chief Judge Linda Reade told the attorney that interviews of jurors in Rubashkin’s 2009 trial on bank fraud charges cannot be used for future appeals or other court proceedings, according to The Gazette,…
Hobby Lobby, following a blog report that the chain did not stock Hanukkah merchandise, said it was evaluating its inventory and looking into an alleged anti-Jewish slur by one of its employees. Ken Berwitz on his Hopelessly Partisan blog wrote over the weekend that a friend who asked about Hanukkah goods at the arts and…
A resolution that calls male ritual circumcision a “violation of the physical integrity of children” was passed overwhelmingly by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The council, a pan-European intergovernmental organization, debated and passed the resolution on Tuesday based on a report by the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development led…
Marc Jacobs, the star designer who turned Louis Vuitton from a staid luggage-maker into a global fashion brand, is leaving to focus on his own eponymous label, a source close to the French company’s parent LVMH said on Wednesday. The move follows a series of leadership changes at Louis Vuitton, LVMH’s cash cow and biggest…
Legalizing marijuana would generate more than $450 million annually for the Israeli economy, a new study shows. The black market for cannabis in Israel currently is worth $707 million annually, according to the study released Tuesday by the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. If the sale of marijuana was legalized and it was taxed at…
In the eight years since Rabbi Avrohom Leventhal moved from Baltimore to this central Israeli city of 80,000, he has trained as a technical writer, taken over a local charity and become president of his synagogue. Now Leventhal is hoping to add city councilman to his resume. Leventhal loves Beit Shemesh, but none of his…
Israel asked the United Nations to recognize Yom Kippur as an official U.N. holiday. Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin and Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Ron Prosor, met Monday with U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson to request international recognition for Yom Kippur, Haaretz reported. With the recognition, U.N. employees would be allowed to take a…
(JTA) — The “credible military threat” against Iran that Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to hear while he was in the United States this week eventually emerged — from his own lips. The Israeli prime minister, in a blunt speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, warned that Israel was ready to go it alone…
Britain’s Labor Party leader Ed Miliband defended his late father against a newspaper’s claim that he was an unpatriotic Jewish Marxist who “hated Britain.” The Daily Mail, in an article published Saturday under the headline “The Man Who Hated Britain,” reported that Ralph Miliband, a Jewish refugee from Belgium who fled to Britain before World…
Hungary will use all political and legal tools available to crack down on resurgent anti-Semitism in the country, the deputy prime minister said on Tuesday, in one of the government’s boldest statements yet on the issue. “We cannot allow, especially knowing our own responsibility, anti-Semitism to gain strength in Hungary,” Tibor Navracsics told a conference…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday dismissed a charm offensive by Iran’s new president as a ruse concocted by a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and declared that Israel was ready to stand alone to deny Tehran an atomic weapon. In a combative address to the U.N. General Assembly, Netanyahu spoke harshly about Hassan Rouhani,…
