(JTA) — Israel has ended a restriction on blood donation that effectively prohibited gay men from donating blood. Until now, Israel had prohibited any man who had had same-sex relations over the past 12 months from giving blood. Now, the question’s wording will be changed to asking whether prospective donors have had “high risk sexual…
(JTA) — President Joe Biden has nominated Rahm Emanuel to be the next ambassador to Japan. Emanuel, who was Chicago’s mayor from 2011 to 2019, previously served as a congressman and Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff. He has attracted opposition from progressives due to how he handled the 2014 police killing of Laquan…
(JTA) — It sounded like a story heard time and again: A government official criticizes her rivals for breaking COVID restrictions — and then is caught breaking them herself. That is what seemed to happen Friday night, when an Israeli reporter tweeted that Israel’s Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli had traveled to the United States, contrary…
A rabbi sexually assaulted children while he was supposed to be treating them for mental health issues, and the prominent Jewish institutions he worked for covered it up, claims a lawsuit filed in New York August 13. Rabbi Yaakov David Klar allegedly carried out his abuse while he was a social worker at Chai Lifeline,…
That was quick. Two days after The Ringer reported on Mike Richards’ past podcast remarks, in which the newly appointed “Jeopardy!” host made offensive remarks about poor people, Haitians and Jews, Richards announced he was stepping down. “It pains me that these past incidents and comments have cast such a shadow on ‘Jeopardy!’ as we…
(JTA) — The office of Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi wants to exhume from a Jerusalem cemetery the body of a woman said to be a Christian who pretended to be Jewish. A top representative of Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau outlined the plan in June to exhume or alternatively fence off the woman’s grave. Or…
(JTA) — The Argentines who placed stones in front of the Casa Rosada government building this week were marking a grim milestone in their country’s COVID-19 experience: crossing the 100,000-death threshold. They were also echoing a Jewish ritual whose telltale signs — small rocks perched atop gravestones — can be seen in any Jewish cemetery…
As the 19 year-old victim of a shooting outside a Denver yeshiva was laid to rest Wednesday, police announced that they have made arrests in the case. Four young men – Seth James Larhode, 21; Isaiah James Freeman, 18; Aden Sides, 18; and Noah Loepp-Hall, 19 – are now in custody facing multiple charges after…
(JTA) — About two years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, the Genesis Prize Foundation gave out $3.5 million for gender equity initiatives in honor of the Supreme Court justice. One of the Ginsburg grants has now borne fruit with the release of a report on why there are relatively few female leaders in Jewish institutions…
(JTA) — (Baltimore Jewish Times via JTA) — Reflecting on the Israeli baseball team’s performance at the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics, the squad’s sports physical therapist said it was “painfully close” to competing for a medal. “Being that close showed a lot of people,” said Yoni Rosenblatt, a fourth-generation Baltimorean who lives in suburban Pikesville,…
Eytan Stibbe, the former Israeli Air Force pilot who is self-funding a trip into space aboard SpaceX’s Axiom Mission 1 in January, has chosen a particularly apt piece of Jewish heritage to accompany him: a coin from the era of the Bar Kochba revolt, bearing the name of its leader, Shimon Bar Kochba. Bar Kochba…
