(JTA) — Zebulon Simantov, Afghanistan’s last Jew, has not left Kabul, despite the best efforts of some Jewish figures and organizations. One of them was Moshe Margaraten, a haredi Orthodox fixer whose passion is bringing Jews out of danger. Margareten paid Moti Kahana, an Israeli-American businessman who helped extract people from war-torn Syria, to be…
(JTA) — In his first Paralympic Games, 21-year-old Israeli swimmer Mark Malyar has made history: He won gold for Team Israel and set a new world record in the men’s 200-meter individual medley (SM7) category. Malyar swam the race in a time of 2:29.01. The SM7 category includes swimmers who have limited leg function, or…
MADRID (JTA) — After taking criticism from several Holocaust scholars and Jewish organizations, a Spanish university has canceled a course titled “Auschwitz/Gaza: A Testing Ground for Comparative Literature,” according to the European Jewish Congress. The course at the University of of Santiago of de Compostela in Galicia trivialized the Holocaust by comparing it to the…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The highly-anticipated first meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and President Joe Biden will have to wait — but so far it’s not canceled in the wake of a brewing Middle East conflict. After news broke of the explosions outside Kabul’s airport that killed at least 12 U.S. troops, the White…
An altercation at a Florida resort is now being investigated as an enhanced antisemitic hate crime by the Aventura Police Department. Alain Altit, an Orthodox man and father of six, was standing by the pool when he overheard a guest call a woman a “dirty Jew.” When he tried to intervene to defend the woman,…
(JTA) — Archaeologists have unearthed parts of the Great Synagogue of Vilnius, a 17th-century building, that were presumed to have been destroyed by the Nazis and Soviets. One of the main findings from that section of the synagogue, whose ruins have been catalogued and mapped for several years in the current dig, are two mikvahs,…
A Yeshiva University student accused a member of its men’s basketball team of raping her and the school of treating her callously in an anonymous piece published Wednesday in the student newspaper, the YU Commentator. “The school didn’t want to do anything against the basketball team publicly, because they don’t want any negativity about that…
(JTA) — Israel’s Chief Rabbinate has asked Pope Francis to retract a recent comment about Jewish law that it said might lead Catholic listeners to “derogatory conclusions” about Jews. Rabbi Ratzon Arusi, chair of the Chief Rabbinate’s Commission for Interreligious Affairs, sent a letter to the Vatican expressing concerns about an Aug. 11 lecture there…
On his first trip to Washington as Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett met with leaders of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a group that has been criticized in recent years for backing the Israeli government’s right-wing policies. The get-together raised some eyebrows. While it’s common for an Israeli leader to meet with pro-Israel and…
(JTA) — The owners of a Ukrainian cafe housed in a former synagogue said they worked two lightning rods into the logo to advertise the reenergizing qualities of the coffee there. Instead they waded into a political minefield because they ended up reproducing the symbol of the SS, Nazi Germany’s murderous elite force. On Tuesday,…
(JTA) — (New York Jewish Week via JTA) — The elevators at Fort Lee, New Jersey, condo building will again stop on every floor during Shabbat after the condo board settled with Orthodox Jewish residents who sued over the service’s cancelation. Dozens of residents charged in a June lawsuit that The Colony was discriminating against…
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