Rabbi Pinchas Punturello will begin work in southern Italy and Sicily to reach out to the Bnei Anousim, the descendants of Jews forced to convert to Catholicism centuries ago. Punturello’s posting is a joint project of Shavei Israel, an Israel-based nonprofit that helps strengthen and recover Jewish identity, and the Union of Italian Jewish Communities….
President Barack Obama was given a rapturous reception by Israeli students on Thursday as he made a rousing call for peace with the Palestinians, but his lofty oratory got lower marks beyond the conference hall. Urging the younger generation to push politicians for change, Obama said a concerted effort must be made to secure an…
President Barack Obama appealed directly on Thursday to the Israeli people to put themselves in the shoes of stateless Palestinians and recognise that Jewish settlement activity in occupied territory hurts prospects for peace. In a showcase speech in Jerusalem to Israeli university students, Obama coupled his plea with an acknowledgement of the Jewish state’s security…
A Hungarian television journalist said he would return an award he was given last week after he was accused of anti-Semitism and the government said it gave him the award by mistake. In a clip of one of his programmes from 2010, posted on YouTube, Ferenc Szaniszlo said on a programme on private Echo TV…
In a letter to Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, the Simon Wiesenthal Center called on Argentina to immediately cancel its accord with Iran to investigate the bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center. Monday’s letter follows Iran’s demand that Interpol arrest warrants be suspended against its citizens implicated in the 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish…
President Barack Obama voiced opposition on Thursday to Israeli settlement building but pressed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to drop his demand for a freeze before Middle East peace talks can resume. After an effusive welcome in Israel, Obama travelled to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where disillusioned Palestinians held out little hope that their moment in…
Twitter is being sued for about $50 million in France for failing to honor a court ruling which ordered it to identify users who posted anti-Semitic hate speech. The Union of Jewish French Students, or UEJF by its French acronym, filed the lawsuit on Wednesday with a Paris correctional tribunal, according to the French news…
A controversial Canadian Jewish television host apologized for a rant against the Roma people. Ezra Levant of the Sun TV network sparked widespread outrage in September when he referred to Roma as “gypsies” and “a culture synonymous with swindlers…one of the central characteristics of that culture is that their chief economy is theft and begging.”…
The filming schedule of “The Amazing Spider Man 2” has changed in response to a request made by the haredi Orthodox community of Williamsburg. Producers of the Hollywood franchise being shot at the Marcy Avenue Armory, a building located in the mostly Yiddish-speaking part of Williamsburg, agreed to reduce the presence of their vehicles in…
Two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip landed on Thursday in a southern Israeli border town that U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned in a speech on his arrival in Israel a day earlier. Police said there were no casualties but some damage in the attack on Sderot near the Gaza frontier. There was no immediate…
After an effusive welcome in Israel, U.S. President Barack Obama travelled to the occupied West Bank on Thursday for talks with Palestinian leaders who accuse him of sidelining their dream of statehood. Obama flew by helicopter to the Palestinian government headquarters in Ramallah, where disillusioned Palestinians held out little hope that their moment in the…
