An ombudsman will investigate how top officials at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany handled an anonymous letter that could have drastically reduced a multi-million dollar fraud at the organization. Julius Berman, chairman of the Claims Conference, has faced growing calls from board members for an independent investigation into the 2001 letter, which…
Poverty in the New York area’s Jewish community is growing fast with more than 560,000 people living in nearly 200,000 poor and near-poor Jewish households. The survey covers the five boroughs of New York City: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island, as well as the nearby counties of Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester. The…
A top official at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service on Thursday acknowledged that it was “embarrassing” how much the tax agency spent on training videos, including a Star Trek spoof, and other lavish expenses during a 2010 conference in California. Faris Fink, commissioner of the agency’s small business and self-employed division, told lawmakers the videos,…
Austria will withdraw its peacekeepers from the U.N. monitoring force on the Golan Heights given worsening fighting between Syrian government forces and rebels, it said on Thursday. Austrians account for about 380 of the 1,000-strong U.N. force monitoring a ceasefire between Syria and Israel, and their departure will deal a serious blow to the mission….
The Israel Defense Forces is drafting an official directive defining accepted practices for its members on social networks. Wednesday’s announcement comes in the wake of a Facebook posting of young women recruits in their underwear that gained international − and, from the IDF’s perspective, unwanted − attention. However, the IDF did not say if the…
Women of the Wall announced plans to read from a Torah scroll at its upcoming service at the Western Wall. Also leading up to Sunday’s service, several leading haredi Orthodox rabbis called on thousands of haredi men to gather for a mass prayer opposite Women of the Wall. Women of the Wall gathers at the…
Police in Australia say they now have four primary suspects in the 1982 bombings of the Israeli Consulate and the Hakoah Club, and offered a $100,000 reward to help flush them out. Detective Chief Superintendent Wayne Gordon, the commander of the terrorism investigation squad, told reporters Thursday in Sydney that he hoped the money would…
A group of imams who toured Auschwitz and Dachau said “denying the reality of the Holocaust” was “unacceptable.” “We bear witness to the absolute horror and tragedy of the Holocaust, where millions upon millions of human souls perished, more than half of whom were people of the Jewish faith,” said the May 28 statement from…
Samantha Power, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her study of U.S. failure to prevent genocide and is seen as an advocate of an activist U.S. foreign policy, would get a bigger platform for her views as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The former journalist, Harvard University professor and White House national security staffer…
Susan Rice has said that a “huge” portion of her work at the United Nations was defending Israel’s legitimacy. Her new job will likely be no less Israel-centric. President Obama plans Wednesday to name Rice his national security adviser and replace her at the U.N. with Samantha Power, one of his top White House advisers….
A Brooklyn couple that hosted a self-help radio show together were found dead in their apartment on Monday. The couple appeared to have suffocated themselves with plastic bags in a double-suicide, according to the New York Daily News. Lynne Rosen, 46, a psychotherapist, and John Littig, 48, a motivational speaker and musician, hosted “The Pursuit…
