A special Federal Bureau of Investigation team from Washington on Thursday began reviewing the death of a Chechen immigrant linked to the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, a day after he was shot and killed by an agent during questioning in Orlando. The dead man, Ibragim Todashev, 27, was a friend of suspected bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev…
French singer and songwriter Georges Moustaki, beloved in France for his songs celebrating liberty and collaborations with Edith Piaf, died on Thursday after a long illness. He was 79. The Greek-born Jewish singer grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, and arrived in Paris in 1951, where he began to play guitar at nightclubs and met some…
Julius Berman, the chairman of the Claims Conference board, insisted he is not to blame for botching an investigation into a 2001 letter exposing massive fraud at the Holocaust restitution organization. “Somebody dropped the ball. That’s this issue,” Berman, 77, said in a new interview. “My conscience is totally clean on the role I played.”…
Sheldon Adelson asked for a meeting, and Yair Lapid consented. Adelson’s purpose in asking for the meeting was to ensure that Lapid would not cut government support to the Birthright program — which totals $40 million per year — as part of the budget cuts. In these words, more or less, Lapid described the enigmatic…
British Jews are no more at risk from terrorism than they were before the slaying of a British soldier by suspected terrorists, British Jewry’s security unit said. “For the Jewish community security, the primary lessons remain unchanged,” CST wrote Thursday on its website. “Rather than living in fear, we should be alert to the full…
Secretary of State John Kerry held separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials on Thursday and acknowledged there was considerable scepticism that the two sides would resume peace negotiations. There were no signs of any breakthrough as Kerry visited Israel for the fourth time in his four months in office to try to revive a…
The government of Lithuania asked Israeli President Shimon Peres to head the international advisory board for the restoration of the Vilnius Great Synagogue. “The [restoration] project is an important part of the effort to both preserve and restore Vilnius’ Jewish heritage, and I think that President Peres could bring valuable guidance and insight to our…
Over the past half century, intermarriage has become increasingly common in the United States among all religions – but among Jews at a higher rate than any other. Why that is the case is one of the questions Naomi Schaefer Riley probes in her new book, “‘Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is…
He was a brilliant composer, a confirmed anti-Semite and an undeniably significant influence on the history of music. And today, he would have been 200 years old. That man, of course, was Richard Wagner. “Only Jesus, Napoleon and Hitler had more written about them,” said the German newspaper Die Welt’s culture affairs critic Manuel Brug…
Chelsea Clinton, who has said her marriage fueled her interest in interfaith relations, will head a multi-faith institute at New York University. Clinton, 33, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, will co-chair the university’s Of Many Institute, which will “develop multi-faith dialogue and train multi-faith leaders,”…
More than 500 rabbis and cantors urged the Boy Scouts of America to drop its ban on homosexual members when the youth group’s National Council convenes in Dallas this week. Representatives of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements signed the letter, which was coordinated by the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism and sent to…
