Women of the Wall blew a shofar at the back of the Western Wall Plaza and raised a Torah scroll at the plaza’s gate as they completed their service under a heavy police barricade. Women of the Wall gathers at the beginning of each Jewish month for a women’s Rosh Chodesh prayer service at the…
Four Israeli soldiers were wounded on Wednesday in an explosion on the border with Lebanon, a military spokesman said. The troops were involved in “an activity near the border”, the spokesman said, without providing further details of the circumstances of the blast. They were taken to hospital. Israeli forces routinely patrol the frontier with Lebanon,…
When one thinks of how Hollywood has related to the Nazis, among the first movies that come to mind are “Casablanca” and “The Great Dictator,” in which the America movie industry portrayed the Nazis and Adolf Hitler in particular in a critical manner. A new book being published in the United States claims, however, that…
Actor Dustin Hoffman has undergone treatment for cancer, the Oscar-winner’s publicist confirmed on Tuesday. Hoffman’s publicist, Jodi Gottlieb, declined to say what kind of cancer or when the “Tootsie” star was diagnosed. The news was first reported by People Magazine, where Gottlieb said the cancer had been “detected early and he has been surgically cured.”…
(JTA) — A few weeks before Poland’s parliament voted last month on whether to overturn a ban on ritual slaughter, Rabbi Menachem Margolin was scheduled to meet the Polish president in an effort to find a solution to the problem. The ban had been imposed in January, when a Polish constitutional court outlawed Jewish and…
Jerusalem police asked haredi Orthodox members of the Jerusalem City Council and Women of the Wall leaders to refrain from confrontation at the Western Wall Plaza this week. Women of the Wall will hold its monthly Rosh Chodesh prayer service at the Western Wall on Wednesday morning. The police and the rabbi of the Western…
Najla Said, daughter of the late Palestinian intellectual and leading post-Modernist Edward Said, tried to ignore the Palestinian culture and heritage handed down to her by her parents in their Manhattan home when she was young. But the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the subsequent souring of attitudes towards Arab-Americans, caused her to think again….
Most Israelis would oppose any peace deal with the Palestinians that involved withdrawing to pre-1967 ceasefire lines, even if landswaps were agreed to accommodate Jewish settlements, a poll showed on Tuesday. The survey by the liberal Israeli Democracy Institute (IDI) showed 65.6 percent of those questioned did not expect to see a deal in talks…
An Op-Ed in the Vatican newspaper blasted “unrestrained anti-Semitism” at a music festival in Belgium where British rocker Roger Waters displayed an inflatable wild boar balloon with a Star of David and other symbols on it. “The spirit and the style of the Werchter Rock festival was visible, with the fans who had every right…
A French senator said she will complain to police over death threats she received after proposing special labels for halal and kosher meat. Sylvie Goy-Chavent of the centrist UDI party will lodge a complaint with police over the threats and online “calls for civil war and a call for the Israeli government to attack France,”…
Yehuda Lev, an iconoclastic journalist and veteran of World War II and Israel’s War of Independence who established a European underground route to smuggle Holocaust survivors to Palestine, has died. Lev died Aug. 3 in Providence, Rhode Island, after a prolonged illness. He was 86. Lev became the first associate editor of the newly founded…
