Rabbi Michael Broyde, a prominent Orthodox rabbi who admitted to creating a fake alternate identity, was relieved of his duties with the Beth Din of America. Broyde, who admitted last week that he had used a false name to gain access to a rabbinic email list and to write letters to various journals, was placed…
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is likely to keep Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in office for the next few weeks while the United States tries to revive Middle East peace talks, officials said on Monday. Abbas accepted the resignation of Fayyad on Saturday, adding a layer of uncertainty to local politics just when Washington had resumed…
Customers can wave goodbye to KoJel kosher foods products like instant noodle soup and pudding — at least for a little while. V.I.P. Foods, the Queens food supplier that manufactures the products, has had roughly $1 million worth of inventory seized due to rodent infestation, The New York Times reported. The federal Food and Drug…
A museum dedicated to Anne Frank defended Canadian pop star Justin Bieber on Monday for writing in its guest book that he hoped the young Holocaust victim would have been a “belieber”, the popular term for his fans. Bieber, 19, came under fire on social media for his written comments after visiting the Anne Frank…
A French Jewish group which last month sued Twitter for hosting anti-Semitic content has lodged a fresh complaint against the company and accused it of lying. The latest complaint by the Union of Jewish Students of France, or UEJF, was filed on April 12 with the Paris Public Prosecutor’s office against Twitter President and Director…
The University of Manitoba Students’ Union voted to strip funding and official club status from an anti-Israel group on campus. The vote on April 11 went against legal advice and bucked the trend among other student councils at Canadian universities which in recent months have voted to divest from Israel. The vote of 19 to…
Late socialist leader Hugo Chavez’s chosen successor Nicolas Maduro won Venezuela’s presidential election by a whisker but now faces opposition protests plus a host of economic and political challenges in the OPEC nation. The 50-year-old former bus driver, whom Chavez named as his preferred heir before dying from cancer, edged out opposition challenger Henrique Capriles…
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles charged there was a plot to change the result of Sunday’s presidential election in Venezuela, which will decide if a longtime loyalist continues Hugo Chavez’s self-styled socialist revolution. By mid-evening, both Capriles’ camp and that of acting President Nicolas Maduro expressed confidence that they had won, raising concerns that the results…
Berlin’s district attorney is investigating complaints about a circumcision in the German capital involving the controversial metzizah b’peh ritual. A spokesman for the office of the public prosecutors, Martin Steltner, told JTA that several complaints were lodged formally in the past two weeks regarding the March 3 circumcision of the infant son of Berlin Chabad…
Michael Broyde, the top Modern Orthodox rabbi accused of setting up a fake persona to undermine a rival organization and praise his own work, downplayed the importance of the scandal in a new interview. Broyde, 48, spoke exclusively with Haaretz as soon as Shabbat ended. In an interview during which he ranged from sounding befuddled…
Israel has said it will not open a criminal investigation into the death of 12 Palestinian civilians in a November air strike on a house in the Gaza Strip during its war with Hamas. The Nov. 18 attack on the three-storey home of the Dalu family was the bloodiest of the eight days of fighting…
