A long-range Grad rocket fired from Gaza seriously damaged two houses in a southern Israeli city. Two homes in Netivot, located between Gaza and Beersheba, were hit with one rocket in the early Sunday morning attack. One of the homes was completely destroyed. A resident of the home saved himself by running into a bathroom…
The Israeli government voted overwhelmingly in favor of recognizing the Ariel University Center of Samaria as an accredited university on Sunday. The cabinet resolution is symbolic, since the controversial change to the status of the institution, which is located in the West Bank city of Ariel, must first be approved by the High Court of…
Jerusalem Police arrested five Jewish teens in connection with an attack on an Arab resident of eastern Jerusalem, which left the victim with a broken leg. The arrests on Saturday night came two days after Ibrahim Abu Taha, 28, was attacked in downtown Jerusalem. The victim and a Jewish co-worker had walked a female Jewish…
Mahmoud Abbas announced Saturday that the Palestinian Authority has decided to seek United Nations recognition as a non-member state. This will happen, said the Palestinian president, despite United States pressure opposing the move. Abbas, who spoke to reporters Saturday afternoon in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said the PA intends to submit the request…
The American Jewish Committee condemned a decision earlier this week by the state of Berlin that places restrictions on circumcisions. The decision affirmed the legality of circumcisions but placed limitations on who could carry them out. It said that only doctors, and not mohels, could perform circumcisions. The state also required that parents be informed…
Chabad has purchased a building in midtown Manhattan for $42 million. In its announcement, Chabad said it had been renting the 12-story, 60,000-sq.-ft. building at 509 Fifth Avenue for the past 16 years before it bought it on Thursday. The building has a synagogue, offers programming and oversees the activities of seven Chabad centers in…
Police are investigating a graffiti attack in a predominately Jewish neighborhood in New Jersey as a hate crime. A dozen swastikas were painted on mailboxes, street signs, roads and personal property in Manalapan, N.J., the N.J. Jewish News reported. The phrase “Kill the Jews” was also found amid the graffitti discovered Thursday morning. “The people…
Israel’s Maariv daily will be sold to Shlomo Ben-Zvi, owner of the daily Makor Rishon, for NIS 85 million, Maariv said on Friday. Nochi Dankner, who controls Maariv, reached an agreement Friday afternoon with Ben-Zvi, publisher of the Makor Rishon daily, which is considered a right-wing publication. The deal does not include Maariv’s printing house…
Two Jewish organizational leaders asked Montenegro’s president to help the Balkan country’s small Jewish community build a synagogue. The issue was raised last week during a visit to Montenegro by Vadim Rabinovich and Joel Rubinfeld, both chairmen of the recently established European Jewish Parliament. Montenegro, an area of the former Yugoslavia that became independent in…
The representative body of Spain’s Jewish community has renewed efforts to have a pejorative word connected to Jews scrapped from the country’s official dictionary. Isaac Querub, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain (FCJE), recently wrote to the Royal Spanish Academy, the institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language, to remove the word…
Chabad’s Rabbinical College of America in Morristown, N.J., plans to ordain 280 new rabbis at an event the movement is billing as the largest ordination class in the modern era. The Sept. 9 program will feature former Israeli Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Israel Meir Lau and other rabbinic dignitaries. The newly minted rabbis, some of whom…
