I first met Coretta Scott King — who died January 30 at 78 — in 1995 at a Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration hosted by the World Jewish Congress. The event, which took place at the Seagram Building, celebrated the proclamation by Jewish communities in 80 countries that Jews worldwide will remember King’s legacy. In…
Disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff may have played a key role in setting up a 2002 meeting between President Bush and an Asian leader known for his anti-Jewish speeches, according to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times. The Times reported last week that the Malaysian government paid Abramoff $1.2 million for work in…
Bernie Weisberg, former national director of Young Judea and the Labor Zionist Alliance, died last Wednesday at the age of 82. Born in Maine, Weisberg attended Yeshiva University as an undergraduate and considered becoming a rabbi. However, when the school newspaper refused to publish an editorial he had written that supported the establishment of a…
More than a year after promising to bring 600 Ethiopians to Israel each month, the Israeli government has taken few concrete steps toward fulfilling the pledge, leaving thousands of immigrants in unhappy limbo and in squalid conditions. At issue is the fate of the Falash Mura, Ethiopians who are said to have Jewish ancestors who…
JERUSALEM — The change in the election law looked minor, barely more significant than the flapping of a butterfly’s wings. Yet the decision to raise the percentage of the national vote that a party needs to enter the Knesset is already reshaping Israel’s political map. It could eliminate parties, cut the number of Arab Knesset…
Religion Ruling Cheered Jewish organizations welcomed a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a small religious sect’s right to use an illegal hallucinogenic. The União do Vegetal argued that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 exempted the group from bans on the ritual use of hoasca, a tea containing diemethyltryptamine. The court decision Tuesday,…
WASHINGTON — Despite previous vows to press the Bush administration to set an exit strategy from Iraq, leaders of the Reform synagogue movement have decided not to push for a resolution on the issue at the Jewish community’s major policy conference. Movement leaders promised to mobilize the American Jewish community on the issue after delegates…
With the International Atomic Energy Agency set to hold another crucial meeting on Iran, Tehran proposed to send its own inspectors to investigate the veracity of the Auschwitz death camp. At the meeting, scheduled for March 6, the nuclear watchdog agency is expected to decide whether to refer Iran’s nuclear program to the United Nations…
After hearing that the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri was promoting a competition for cartoons about the Holocaust, two Israeli artists, illustrator Amitai Sandy and actor Eyal Zusman, decided to launch an antisemitic cartoon contest of their own — open only to Jews. “We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew-hating cartoons…
Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt was once sued by David Irving, but that doesn’t mean she supports the jail sentence given to the Holocaust denier in Austria this week. On Tuesday, a day after an Austrian court sentenced Irving to three years in prison for statements he made in 1989, Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish…
Seeking to build on the success of their own longstanding dialogue, Jewish and Catholic leaders have held several discussions in recent weeks about launching more intensive interfaith talks with Muslims. “Before it was considered like something nice to do,” said Father Patrick Dubois, the French bishops’ liaison to the Jewish community in France. “Now it’s…
אין פֿאַרגלײַך מיט די פֿיזישע פּאַוויליאָנען געשאַפֿן פֿון אָפֿיציעלע לענדער איז דער ייִדישלאַנד־פּאַוויליאָן געבויט אויף אידעעס
