This article originally appeared on Haaretz and was reprinted here with permission. With little more than a day to go before American tourists are officially barred from entering Israel, 160 participants in Birthright’s free 10-day trips landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Monday. The program received a special exemption from the previous overall ban on…
(JTA) — Gabriel Boric, a 35-year-old left-wing lawmaker who has been sharply critical of Israel and Chilean Jews who support it, was elected president of Chile in a landslide victory this weekend. Boric, who came to fame as a student leader, won with 56% of the vote, 12 points over his conservative rival, José Antonio…
(JTA) — Shirley Zussman, a pioneering sex therapist who, along with her gynecologist husband, was among the early practitioners of sex therapy beginning in the 1960s, died at her home in Manhattan earlier this month. She was 107. While Zussman may not be as well-known as Dr. Ruth Westheimer, another Jewish sex therapist and New…
(JTA) — Students at a Washington, D.C. elementary school were instructed by a staff member to reenact scenes from the Holocaust Friday, according to the Washington Post. When the students asked why the Germans killed Jews, the staff member said it was “because the Jews ruined Christmas.” The third-graders at Watkins Elementary School were supposed to…
(JTA) — Israel’s Health Ministry recommended barring Israelis from traveling to the United States due to the coronavirus outbreak of the Omicron variant there. The government is set to vote on the recommendation Sunday evening and, if the recommendation is accepted, the travel restrictions would go into effect Wednesday. Foreign travelers have been barred from…
(JTA) — (New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Twenty-one months after New York City synagogues and Jewish schools became some of the first to close because of the encroaching COVID-19 pandemic, a surge in cases is causing them to shut their doors again. Several Jewish day schools have switched to virtual learning for the…
BERLIN (JTA) — A German Protestant minister has handed over segments of a long lost Torah scroll to the city of Görlitz in southeast Germany, 83 years after his father, a town policeman, came into possession of them. While it is not unheard of for German non-Jews to turn over religious objects that have been lost or hidden…
(JTA) — The Greek-Jewish community is celebrating the return of a trove of manuscripts and community documents that the Nazis had stolen nearly 80 years ago. The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) announced in a statement earlier this month that Russia, who was in possession of the archives, has agreed to return…
There’s no love lost between Rep. Josh Gottheimer and activists from the Working Families Party, who have assailed the New Jersey Democrat’s opposition to their progressive priorities. But that feud escalated this week, when Gottheimer said in a speech that party members had hurled antisemitic abuse at him during a protest. “Not long ago, I…
A federal judge on Thursday overturned Purdue Pharma’s $4.5 billion opioid settlement, which had shielded members of the Sackler family who own the company from future lawsuits related to the epidemic. U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in New York wrote in a 142-page opinion that the settlement that granted immunity to the Sacklers was “inconsistent”…
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Brad Lander, the incoming New York City comptroller, vowed to do everything in his power to coax Orthodox yeshivas to teach a secular curriculum. Lander, who is Jewish and a Democrat, discussed the issue Thursday night in a virtual Q-and-A with the New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive…
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