It may look like Jared Rosenthal is cruising around New York City in an oversized ice cream truck, but the 45-year-old entrepreneur is selling a commodity far more precious than a frozen treat: He’s offering DNA tests to confirm paternity and other biological connections to anyone willing to shell out $350 for the information. With…
While many in the Jewish community are celebrating the upcoming release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, some are still reflecting bitterly on his case. For many in sensitive government security positions, and for those working as defense contractors, Pollard’s espionage for Israel represents not only a moral lapse, but also a practical problem they still…
(JTA) This seaside community situated 125 miles west of Paris boasts windswept beaches, turquoise-water marinas, a grand casino, a race track and an Olympic-size swimming pool. Deauville, spanning 2.2 square miles, also has five kosher restaurants, three main synagogues and more than 20 smaller Jewish congregations. The picturesque Lower Normandy township emerged decades ago as…
Today, Lake Oroville, California’s second largest reservoir, looks like an almost barren valley. The piers of Enterprise Bridge, once steeped in fresh water, stand tall and dry, supporting the deck over a stream that trickles down the valley’s center. At the 2015 Summit on Water Technology and the California Drought, held on July 10 in…
One day in June, my friend Inge Rapoport received her doctoral degree at a ceremony so newsworthy that the large numbers of journalists stationed in the back of an auditorium at the University of Hamburg Medical School had to be reminded to be quiet. It was an academic ceremony, they were told, not a press…
The father of Ali Saad Dawabshe, the 18-month-old Palestinian killed in an arson attack, apparently at the hands of Jewish settlers, died in an Israeli hospital on Saturday morning. Saad Dawabshe, 32, was laid to rest in a funeral in Duma, outside of Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. His wife, in critical condition, and…
(JTA) — It’s been a particularly challenging summer for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi. Within one week in late June and early July, his attorney general was assassinated in the upscale Cairo suburb of Heliopolis and an Islamic State affiliate launched a two-day siege in the North Sinai town of Sheikh Zuweid. But just days…
In the battle over the nuclear deal with Iran now consuming the Jewish community, rival parties are strongly convinced they not only have truth on their side, but also the hearts of the Jewish community, and of the American public. “Americans increasingly disapprove of Iran deal,” read an email blast sent from the American Israel…
On Tuesday, August 4, Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance posted the news that several journalistic organizations had been granted visas to visit and report on the Islamic Republic. Among them was the Forward. By then, Larry Cohler-Esses, our assistant managing editor for news, had already arrived back in New York after a seven-day…
Donors to a charity on Manhattan’s Lower East Side are claiming that they have been misled by a Jewish calendar mailed annually to thousands of homes. The calendar, illustrated with images of old bearded rabbis and filled with pleas for donations, is a fundraising appeal that an Orthodox charity called the Home of the Sages…
Yosef Yabarkan was a six-year-old boy in 1999 when he left his village in Ethiopia with his parents and nine sisters. Like tens of thousands of Jews before them, they made the 1,600-mile trek north to Israel. The family left behind a thatched hut surrounded by farm animals in the Tigray region near the Eritrean…
