(JTA) – The 16 Dead Seas Scroll fragments housed at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., are forgeries, museum officials said Friday. “We’re victims — we’re victims of misrepresentation, we’re victims of fraud,” CEO Harry Hargrove said at an academic conference hosted by the museum, National Geographic reported. A team of researchers led…
(JTA) — Earlier this week, the Jewish Agency for Israel said it was committed to keeping its emissaries in the United States, even as other groups brought theirs home amid the rising coronavirus crisis. But on Friday morning, with schools and synagogues across the country shuttering in an effort to curb the disease’s spread, the…
BBYO, the international, pluralistic Jewish youth organization, is launching a streaming and on-demand video content center for Jewish teens to help Jewish institutions move their youth programming to the internet as schools, camps, sports events and other gatherings are cancelled and postponed due to coronavirus. The service, called BBYO On Demand, launched Friday, and already…
(JTA) — As swine flu swept through the United States in the late spring of 2009, Jewish summer camps took some drastic measures. One set up a quarantined area where some 45 infected kids and counselors lived apart from the rest of the camp. Another took every camper’s temperature twice a day and sent children…
(JTA) — The director of the Holocaust foundation founded by Steven Spielberg has called on Amazon Prime not to produce a second season of “Hunters,” its fictional show about a crew of Nazi hunters in 1970s America. “Survivors of the Shoah sought justice, not revenge,” Stephen Smith, who heads the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, the…
(JTA) — A physician with family ties to senior White House adviser Jared Kushner said he solicited advice on Facebook for Kushner on how to deal with the coronavirus. Kurt Kloss, whose daughter is married to Kushner’s brother, on Wednesday asked a group of fellow emergency room physicians on the social network for the advice…
Rabbis in Bergen County, N.J. have canceled Shabbat, and communal life altogether, in order to help public health officials slow the spread of coronavirus, according to a statement released Thursday. They have ordered that their community stay home with their immediate families, forbidding any gatherings larger than that. From services in synagogues, to classes in…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s schools and universities will close due to the spread of coronavirus, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday. Netanyahu also called to form an emergency national unity government for a limited time, saying “We will deal with the current crisis together and continue later” with the business of politics. The number of Israelis…
Sen. Bernie Sanders is highlighting the support that he’s receiving from American Jews ahead of presidential primaries on Tuesday in states like Florida which have large Jewish populations. On Wednesday, the campaign sent out a press release highlighting the endorsement of the progressive Jewish group IfNotNow. “IfNotNow is building an inspiring movement of young Jews…
(JTA) — Fabio Wajngarten, the press secretary for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, tested positive for coronavirus days after meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, according to news reports from Brazil. Wajngarten, who is Jewish, tweeted a photo Sunday of himself standing with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s resort in Florida….
(JTA) — Rome’s Jewish community is in a “state of complete uncertainty” amid Italy’s coronavirus crisis, according to its president. “We are a proud and ancient community in the midst of the worst situation we have faced since World War II,” the president of Rome’s Jewish community, Ruth Durgello, said in a press release distributed…
