Veteran singer and United Nations Messenger of Peace Stevie Wonder has canceled a planned performance for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces after several organizations asked him not to perform. The soul singer, 62, was scheduled to sing at a Dec. 6 fundraising gala in Los Angeles hosted by the Friends of the Israel…
The president of a Las Vegas union that has clashed with casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson will now lead UNITE HERE, a national hospitality workers union. Culinary Workers Union secretary-treasurer D. Taylor was elected president of UNITE HERE by the union’s governing board on November 29, the union announced. Taylor replaces John Wilhelm, a longtime labor…
Richard Prasquier, the French Jewish leader, said that banning circumcision in Europe “would inevitably mean the end of Judaism” there. “You can seek a ban but you need to understand the consequences: The inevitable disappearance of Jewish life from Europe,” Prasquier said on Thursday during a European Parliament conference on religious freedoms. Pasquier is the…
Representatives of Jewish communities in Spanish-speaking countries are meeting this weekend in Miami to discuss the effects of recent political shifts on Jewish life in the Americas and Iberia. Approximately 200 people are expected at the sixth annual conference on trans-nationalism and its impact on the Jewish agenda, which is organized by the Latino and…
The Obama administration will seek additional funding for Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile program in the wake of its successes in the most recent Israel-Hamas war. “This spring, we announced that we would provide $70 million in fiscal 2012 on top of the $205 million previously appropriated to meet Israel’s needs for that fiscal year,” Defense…
Poland is to draft new laws so that it does not have to stop slaughterhouses from producing kosher meat, a prospect that has angered the Jewish community in the country where Nazi Germany massacred millions of Jews during World War Two. The constitutional court ruled this week that kosher slaughter methods, which involve killing livestock…
A Los Angeles judge dismissed murder charges on Friday against a 70-year-old tennis lineswoman who was accused of beating her husband to death with a coffee mug, and arrested in August as she prepared to officiate at the U.S. Open. The dismissal was granted following a request from prosecutors who said they were unable to…
The White House said on Friday a new Israeli settlement expansion plan was “counterproductive” and could make it harder to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. “We reiterate our longstanding opposition to settlements and East Jerusalem construction and announcements,” White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said. Israel plans to build thousands of…
Four spectators at the trial of an ultra-Orthodox man accused of sexual abuse were arrested for taking photos of the accuser during her testimony. Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, told the New York Times that court officers in the courtroom of State Supreme Court Judge John G. Ingram saw a man…
Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has reached a preliminary agreement with the hotel maid who accused him of sexual assault last year to settle a civil lawsuit she brought against him, sources familiar with the case said. While a source in New York cautioned that the agreement could still fall apart, influential French daily Le…
Israel plans to build thousands of new homes for its settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, an Israeli official said on Friday, defying a U.N. vote that implicitly recognised Palestinian statehood there. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative government had authorised the construction of 3,000…
סאָװעטיש־ייִדיש איז געװען אַ ראַדיקאַלער עקספּערימענט, װאָס פֿאַרנעמט אַ װיכטיקן פּלאַץ אױף דער װעלטמאַפּע פֿון ייִדישער קולטור
