The Israeli daughter of a Jew who escaped Treblinka will design a Holocaust education center to be opened on the premises of the Nazi death camp. The plan to have Orit Willenberg-Giladi, an architect from Tel Aviv and daughter of Samuel Willenberg, design the center was announced August 2 at a ceremony commemorating the 70th…
The Israeli government put 91 Jewish settlements on a national priority funding list on Sunday, adding six to a roster of dozens of enclaves already eligible for supplemental state cash. A senior Palestinian official condemned the decision as an obstacle to U.S.-brokered peace talks that resumed just a week ago after a three-year rupture over…
A body of a woman in her thirties was found Saturday afternoon in a stairwell in south Tel Aviv. The body was decapitated and stuffed inside a suitcase. Police have launched an investigation into the incident. A passerby riding his bicycle through the area discovered the body. When he found the suitcase, he tried to…
A serious act of vandalism, a string of coincidences, and a decision by the Israel Antiquities Authority have combined to change the character of King David’s Tomb on Mt. Zion from a Muslim site into a synagogue. On Tuesday this week, two painters were busy applying the last coats of paint on the building’s doorposts,…
Some years ago, Israel Segal, a writer and journalist who was brought up Orthodox and became secular, summed up what he described as a secular defeat. “The all-out war has indeed come to an end, in my view, with the defeat of the secular public,” he wrote. “We are living under an occupation government of…
San Diego’s embattled mayor, facing sexual harassment allegations from a string of women, was dealt a setback on Friday when a liberal Democrat and a Republican businessman joined forces in a campaign to force a recall election. Bob Filner, the 70-year-old Democratic mayor of California’s second-largest city, has faced mounting pressure to resign over a…
NEW YORK — Amar’e Stoudemire, the New York Knicks star who claims Hebrew roots and is currently touring Israel, is seeking Israeli citizenship. Stoudemire’s agent, Happy Walters, told New York magazine that the Knicks’ power forward is in the process of becoming an Israeli. “He’s getting citizenship,” Walters said. ”He applied, and he’s there now.”…
LOS ANGELES – Comedian Ellen DeGeneres has been chosen to host the annual Oscars telecast in March, after last year’s host and “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane got into hot water over jokes about Jews in Hollywood and provocative dance routines. This would be her second stint as master of ceremonies for the Oscars. DeGeneres,…
The shooting of a Chabad rabbi in the Russian republic of Dagestan was likely a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists, investigators said. Rabbi Artuk Ovadia Isakov was shot on July 25 in Derbent, in southern Russia, “because of his religious duties, likely by Muslim extremists,” investigators said, according to a report by the Russian news…
Madrid’s chief rabbi, Moshe Bendahan, called gays “deviants” who should be re-educated and said same-sex marriages are “monstrous.” “Homosexuality is a deviation from nature,” Bendahan is quoted as telling the online news site Religion Digital in an interview published Wednesday. “It’s an anti-natural tendency and a sin. Contemplating allowing, consenting to what is known as…
In a major embarrassment for Israel, Leo Leiderman announced on Friday he was withdrawing his candidacy to become the next governor of the Bank of Israel, the second nominee to pull out within less than a week. Leiderman, chief economist at Bank Hapoalim, told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he did not want the glare…
