(JTA) — The morning of her conversion to Judaism, Diana Sewell was so nervous she “was running around like a headless chicken” in her Australia home. Meanwhile, some 9,000 miles away in Georgia, her rabbi was dealing with computer difficulties. Neither of those things put a stop to Sewell fulfilling a 60-something-year-old dream of converting…
SYDNEY (JTA) — Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has called on his country to cut its $40 million aid to the Palestinian Authority and to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump moves his country’s embassy. Abbott wrote in the weekly edition of The Spectator magazine: “In discussions…
SYDNEY (JTA) — Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull paid an unexpected visit to Sydney’s Central Synagogue to join its Friday night service and menorah lighting, telling the congregation that Australia stands “shoulder to shoulder” with Israel. Turnbull called the synagogue’s rabbi, Levi Wolff, Friday afternoon in honor of Hanukkah. During the call, Wolff, invited Turnbull to attend…
SYNDEY — An Australian government report found that some members of the Jewish community had been “discouraged from reporting” allegations of child sexual abuse against employees of two yeshivas. The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse published its report Tuesday on the response of Yeshiva Bondi and Yeshivah Melbourne to allegations…
‘Politico’ reporter Hadas Gold was sent an anti-Semitic death threat by a Trump supporter https://t.co/J74AumoWwY pic.twitter.com/TRZab4hY32 — Mic (@mic) October 21, 2016 A bullet hole was traced onto Hadas Gold’s blood-spattered forehead. The photo in the news article showed an accompanying message: ‘Don’t mess with our boy Trump, or you’ll be first in line for…
A private school in Australia said allowing a student to dress up as Adolf Hitler while students from a Jewish school visited was “an innocent mistake.” The Jewish students were present at an assembly on Wednesday when the boy was given a “best dressed” award for his Nazi costume, which a teacher at the private…
Public health officials trying to fight breast cancer in Australia find the country’s Jewish population especially challenging. That’s because Australia’s Jewish community of 112,000 is overwhelmingly Ashkenazi, or of European origin, and counts a high number of descendents of Holocaust survivors, said Lesley Andrews, a doctor at Prince of Whales hospital in Randwick, Australia. Andrews…
A former Australian school principal, wanted in her home country on suspicion of sexually abusing at least 70 students, was freed from house arrest in Israel on Tuesday but ordered to undertake medical treatment after a court ruled her mentally unfit for extradition. Malka Leifer will receive mandatory drug treatment for six months before her…
100% of profits support our journalism
