JERUSALEM — Following a recent wave of Palestinian attacks against Jewish hitchhikers in the West Bank, leaders of the settler movement have started yielding to army pressure and issuing warnings against the dangers of hitchhiking. Settler leaders have long resisted pleas from the military to discourage hitchhiking, citing limited bus service to their isolated outposts…
The country’s two largest synagogue movements are stepping up their criticism of the Bush administration’s domestic wiretapping program and treatment of detainees, in sharp contrast to the approach of the major non-sectarian Jewish civil rights organizations. Senior figures of the Conservative and Reform movements have recently called on the White House to prohibit the use…
Jan Murray, a Jewish comedian who got his start in the Catskills, died Sunday at 89. Murray, who was born Murray Janofsky in the Bronx to immigrant parents, was one of a generation of Jewish comedians that includes Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Shecky Greene and Buddy Hackett. He was a star of 1950s television, using…
Louis Jacobs, the most prolific and controversial rabbi of contemporary British Jewry, died July 1 in London. He was 85. The cause was esophageal cancer, said his son, Ivor. Jacobs was trained as an Orthodox rabbi, and his theological profile took on international significance in the 1960s when he was barred from a prominent rabbinical…
WASHINGTON — As House and Senate negotiators prepare to hammer out a final version of a bill designed to isolate Hamas and to prevent American dollars from strengthening the Palestinian terrorist organization, Jewish groups are lining up on opposite sides of the fight. Jewish organizations are making one last lobbying push as members of both…
Rabbis Ban Smoking A committee of the main union of Modern Orthodox rabbis has ruled that Jewish law prohibits the smoking of tobacco products. The Halachah Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America issued a unanimous opinion on the issue, citing both religious and scientific sources. The decision, which calls on all Jews to avoid…
“They have to learn to keep their process good,” she added. Grandin’s positive remarks came as a welcome piece of good news for AgriProcessors, which has come under fire on a number of fronts since the slaughtering controversy. In May, the Forward published an article about the working conditions of the largely immigrant work force…
CLAYTON COUNTY, Iowa — In a small Mississippi River town like Guttenberg, breaking news events are a rarity, so reporter M.J. Smith has been drawn to what she calls “faith in action stories.” One of her recent columns in the Guttenberg Press (which did not produce the Bible, but is 110 years old) was about…
WASHINGTON — Israel is pointing a menacing finger at a Damascus-based Hamas leader and Syrian officials who continue to grant him sanctuary, claiming that they are responsible for the recent kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and for the escalating crisis in Gaza. Israeli officials insist that from his base of operations in Syria, the Hamas…
TORONTO — Canada’s criminal justice system has begun to crack down on people who are spreading antisemitism and other forms of bigotry over the Internet. A Montreal man faces up to two years in jail after pleading guilty earlier this month to willfully promoting hatred through a racist Web site that he created and managed;…
Faced with a deadly attack on an Israeli post on the Gaza border last Sunday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s rhetoric was predictable and imprecise — but if read carefully, it pointed to the dilemmas that Israel faces right now. Both in remarks to the Cabinet and in a public speech, Olmert defined the clash as…
