(JTA) — For the first time in its history, Israel will hold a second national election in one year, four months after the last election in April. The Israeli Knesset voted at midnight Thursday to dissolve itself, triggering elections on September 17. The unprecedented vote happened after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to assemble a…
It’s no surprise that Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas don’t see eye to eye when it comes to abortion. But recent rulings took their dispute to a whole new level. The justices exchanged jeers after a compromise decision on Tuesday regarding lawsuits challenging Indiana abortion laws brought by Planned Parenthood. The…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Sara Netanyahu, wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his signed a plea deal in a fraud case against her. Sara Netanyahu is accused of ordering some $96,000 worth of private meals from high-end restaurants in 2010 and 2013 rather than using the cook at the prime minister’s residence to prepare meals, violating…
The Jewish population in Brazil is growing, as descendants of forcibly converted Jews are discovering their roots with the help of new genealogy tools and a charismatic rabbi, Religion News Service reported. The ancestors of Bnei Anusim, or the “children of the coerced,” were forced to convert to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition, the 15th…
A court in Poland sentenced two activists to prison, and nine others were ordered to pay fines, in connection with a bizarre 2017 incident in which the protesters slaughtered a sheep, stripped naked and chained themselves to the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Protest organizer Adam Bialiatski, who killed the…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — An open-government watchdog group and several news outlets filed a lawsuit against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and members of the Florida State Cabinet over a meeting being held in Jerusalem. The Cabinet meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem was scheduled to be held on Wednesday afternoon. The lawsuit said that the…
(JTA) — An eruv, or symbolic boundary for Sabbath-observant Jews, was removed from a neighborhood on Staten Island. The eruv had been put up on utility poles around the neighborhood by a group of Hasidic Orthodox Jewish residents. They removed it after other residents put up lawn signs expressing opposition to an influx or religious…
The owners of a Kentucky theme park featuring a replica of the biblical Noah’s Ark are suing its insurance company over rain damage to the property, the Deseret News reported Sunday. Ark Encounter’s main attraction is a 510-foot-tall replica of the ark based on the specifications offered in the Book of Genesis. But the park…
(JTA) — A Belgian model was spit at and chased for walking completely naked through the largely Hasidic Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. Marisa Papen and her crew undertook the photo shoot on March 21, at the end of the Purim holiday, but posted a video of the chase on her website just last week. She…
Outrageous: an Indiana synagogue was vandalized with Nazi graffiti. We stand in solidarity with Congregation Shaarey Tefilla and the Jewish community of Carmel, Indiana. pic.twitter.com/WvIc516slp — AJC (@AJCGlobal) July 29, 2018 The lawyers of a man who defaced an Indiana synagogue’s property with a swastika and iron crosses are arguing that the man should not…
President Trump was so upset by the cooperating witness deals struck between federal prosecutors and several associates — including former attorney Michael Cohen, Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker — that he vented, “The Jews always flip,” journalist Michael Wolff wrote in his new book. The Guardian,…
