(JTA) — (New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Before most New Yorkers had ever heard the word “coronavirus,” another public health scare dominated local news: the measles outbreak of 2019, which shared key parallels with the pandemic to come. In 2019, when the United States saw 1,282 reported measles cases — the highest number since…
Several former Obama officials are imploring the Biden administration to toughen its stance on Iran as indirect talks about returning to the 2015 nuclear deal stagnate. “Without convincing Iran it will suffer severe consequences if it stays on its current path, there is little reason to hope for the success of diplomacy,” the officials, who…
CHICAGO (JTA) — This year’s Association of Jewish Studies conference was supposed to be a triumphal post-pandemic gathering for Jewish studies scholars and enthusiasts. But instead of a carefree Super Bowl of Jewish scholarship, the conference, which began Sunday in Chicago, is smaller than planned, with strict vaccination and mask requirements. The roughly 600 people who…
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Baruch A. Levine, a Bible scholar who wrote the two-volume Anchor Bible commentary on the book of Numbers and the Jewish Publication Society commentary on Leviticus, died Dec. 16 in Hamden, Connecticut. He was 91. The Emeritus Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at New…
MEXICO CITY (JTA) — When Angelina Muñiz Huberman was six years old, her mother shut the main door of their apartment in Mexico City and, whispering as if under persecution, told her that she descended from Jews. “She told me that if I ever needed to get recognized by other fellow Jews,” Huberman said, “I…
Lawyers who accused opposing counsel of antisemitism against their Israeli corporate client must take courses on judicial ethics under a new order from the trial judge that declares the allegations “vitriolic and unsubstantiated.” The Dec. 17 order from U.S. District Judge Alan Albright in Waco, Texas, reiterated what the judge said in an October hearing:…
BOSTON (JTA) – On an unseasonably warm December night earlier this month, some 12,000 people flocked to Boston Common for the lighting of the city’s official Christmas tree: a majestic, 48-foot white spruce. The event marked the 50th straight year that the people of Nova Scotia supplied Boston’s tree — a tribute to how the…
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…
