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U. Penn Hillel Hosts Event With ‘Palestine’ Group — But Was It Against The Rules?
An event at the University of Pennsylvania Hillel co-sponsored by a group that backs boycotting Israel took place recently with no interference despite its challenge to the plain language of Hillel International’s guidelines. The April 26 event featured Avraham Burg, who is a former speaker of the Knesset and served as chairman of the Jewish…
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This Portuguese Diplomat Was Disgraced For Saving Jews. Now, He’s Getting His Due.
On a sunny Sunday morning in late April, the family of an unheralded hero diplomat during the Holocaust took one more step forward in their effort to rehabilitate his ruined name. Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese envoy who saved 30,000 people during World War II — 10,000 of them Jewish — was consigned to…
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Yeshiva U. Loses $84M as Fiscal Woes Snowball
The bottom line just keeps getting uglier for cash-strapped Yeshiva University. The flagship Modern Orthodox school ran an operating deficit of $84 million in fiscal year 2014, according to its latest audited financial statements. That’s the seventh year in a row that Y.U. has run an enormous operating deficit and even worse than the $64…
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Does Israel’s Anti-Boycott Law Muzzle Free Speech?
Six years ago, Neve Gordon was a prominent backer of the movement to boycott Israel due to its policies toward the Palestinians. Today, when asked whether he still supports the boycott, the Israeli professor says simply, “No comment.” Gordon has a good reason to be reticent. In mid-April, the Israeli high court largely upheld a…
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How We Crunched the Numbers on Kidney Donation
Here’s how we arrived at our estimate that . Last year, the United Network for Organ Sharing recorded 180 people who donated their kidney without specifying a recipient. UNOS does not include Renewal donors in this pool. Instead, UNOS included Renewal’s donors among the 1,273 people who directed their kidney to an “unrelated” person. But…
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Can an Orthodox Charity Help Save Lives in This Man’s Church?
David Sarna’s problem began a little more than 20 years ago with an ear infection. While they were examining him, doctors discovered he had high blood pressure and a small amount of kidney damage. For Sarna, who was in his early 40s, it was the first inkling of kidney disease. Sarna did everything he could…
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Books Say Goodbye to This Treasure Trove of Rare Texts — Until 2018
The greatest collection of rare Jewish historical documents in the United States will be boxed up later this year and put into storage until at least 2018, the Forward has learned. The library at Manhattan’s Jewish Theological Seminary — Conservative Judaism’s largest rabbinic seminary — holds the most impressive compilation of Jewish historical materials outside…
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Germany Seeks Compensation for $57M Holocaust Fraud
When it was revealed that an insider fraud had robbed the world’s leading Holocaust charity of $57 million meant to go to poor Holocaust survivors, the German government, which supplied these funds as reparations, was silent about the loss. It was a silence that persisted even after it became clear that eight years before the…
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Does Switch Really Make It Kosher To Switch Lights on Shabbat?
(JTA) — It promises a revolutionary innovation that could transform Jewish Sabbath observance. By changing the way a light switch works, the patented Kosher Switch offers a novel — and, its backers say, kosher — way to turn light switches (and, perhaps, other electrical appliances) on and off during Shabbat, circumventing one of the Sabbath’s…
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Northwestern Probes Swastika Scrawled in Library
Northwestern University police are investigating a swastika that was drawn on a wall of a bathroom in the school library. “It is deeply saddening to know that hatred still exists, and even on our own campus,” said Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein, director of the Tannenbaum Chabad House in Evanston, the Illinois city where the university…
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Which of 3 Hillary Clintons Will You Vote For (or Against)?
Ask two Jews and you’ll hear three different opinions, the old Jewish joke states. Ask two Jews about Hillary Rodham Clinton, now an official Democratic presidential contender, and you’ll hear about three different political personalities, at least on issues pertaining to Israel. There’s Clinton the First Lady, whose few attempts to wade into the Israeli-Palestinian…
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