(JTA) — The foundation stone has been laid for a “City of Torah” in Mexico, the first village in Latin America to be comprised almost exclusively of haredi Orthodox Jews. The village, under construction near Ixtapan de la Sal, a small town about 75 miles southwest of Mexico City, will begin with 40 houses and…
(JTA) — A 92-year-old Jewish woman who fled her native Austria as a child to escape the Nazis, and later befriended the famed diarist Anne Frank, has reclaimed her Austrian citizenship. Eva Schloss, whose mother was the second wife of Otto Frank, Anne’s father, received papers identifying her as an Austrian citizen on Monday at…
The Yale College Council, the university’s undergraduate student government, voted on Sunday to adopt a statement of condemnation against Israel. Originally authored by a student group called Yalies 4 Palestine, the statement denounces the “injustice, genocide, and ethnic cleansing occuring in Palestine.” “As students at one of the most privileged academic institutions in the world,…
The Israeli doctoral student murdered in Chicago was not the victim of an antisemitic attack, police have determined. Around 4 p.m. on June 19, Anat Kimchi, who was 31, was walking on the 400 block of South Wacker Drive in the area known as The Loop when she was stabbed three times. She was brought…
(JTA) — Dozens of headstones were knocked down, with several destroyed, at a Jewish cemetery in Poland. The incident, the third of its kind since 2015, happened on Saturday and left 67 graves desecrated in Bielsko-Biała, in southern Poland, according to the Zrzutka news site. Police have been notified and are investigating the incident. There…
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin met with Jewish American leaders in New York on Sunday with a message of unity as he embarked on a farewell tour before he leaves office on July 7. “Even if we live many miles apart, across nations and across parties and ideologies, we are family,” Rivlin told some 50 leaders…
A Reconstructionist congregation that was housed in the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha building in Pittsburgh targeted in a deadly shooting in 2018 is asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to “abandon its quest for the death penalty” in the case against the accused shooter. In a June 17 letter to Garland, the president of Congregation Dor…
(JTA) — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is making the U.S. part of a fight to keep British doctors from taking a 2-year-old Jewish girl off life support. Schumer, who is Jewish, wrote to Britain’s U.S. ambassador, Karen Pierce, on Wednesday asking her government to prevent medical authorities from making any irreversible moves concerning Alta…
American journalist Danny Fenster appeared at his first court hearing since his detention on unknown charges by Myanmar’s junta regime. Fenster stood before a panel of judges in a special court inside the Insein prison in Yangon, Myanmar, on June 17 after more than three weeks in jail. Fenster’s family and friends hoped the judges…
(JTA) — Honduras formally moved its Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem on Thursday, becoming the fourth country to make the move. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett hosted Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández in a ceremony that also included the foreign ministers of the two countries. According to The Times of Israel, Hernández said in a speech that…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A letter from 73 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, including a number in leadership positions, urges President Joe Biden to make a number of moves to reverse what they call the Trump administration’s “abandonment of longstanding, bipartisan United States policy” on Israeli-Palestinian relations. Among other things, the letter sent Wednesday…
