This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish life in Australia.
Australia
The Latest
-
Fast Forward Jewish Singer Left Sydney Cafe Moments Before Hostage Drama
Jewish communities in Australia remained under lockdown as a hostage crisis continued at a café in Sydney. The Community Security Group, which handles security for the Jewish communities of Australia, raised the threat level to severe on Monday after an apparent Islamist gunman entered a café in downtown Sydney and took dozens of hostages, the…
-
Fast Forward Youth Who Terrorized Jewish Kids To Visit Jewish Museum as Punishment
One of the five youths arrested for terrorizing Jewish children on a school bus earlier this year agreed to visit the Sydney Jewish Museum as part of an agreed punishment. In the juvenile justice system in Sydney, the offender – who cannot be named because he is a minor – also agreed to participate in…
-
Fast Forward Will Australia Join Push for ‘Palestine’ State?
Jewish leaders in Australia scolded an attempt to recognize a Palestine state in federal parliament as “an exercise in empty symbolism.” Labor lawmaker Maria Vamvakinou, a co-convener of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group, tabled the private members’ bill in Canberra Monday calling on the Liberal government of Tony Abbott, one of Israel’s staunchest allies,…
-
Fast Forward Australia Anti-Semitism Rises by 35%
Anti-Semitic incidents in Australia soared by more than a third in the past year. The annual Report on Anti-Semitic Incidents in Australia, presented Sunday at the Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s annual general meeting, logged 312 incidents between October 2013 and September 2014, about a 35 percent increase from 231 incidents the previous year. Much…
-
Fast Forward 1,900-Year-Old Mikveh Found in Israel — and World War II Graffiti
A highway expansion project in Israel has led to the discovery of a nearly 2,000-year-old mikvah. The ritual bath was discovered at Ha-Ela Junction, near the city of Beit Shemesh, during archaeological excavations conducted prior to widening Highway 38, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a news release. In addition to the 1,900-year-old mikvah, archaeologists…
-
Fast Forward Chief Rabbi’s Wife Lashes Out at Australian Sex Abuse Victim
The wife of the Brooklyn-born chief rabbi of Chabad in Sydney apologized unreservedly for offending a child sex abuse victim on the eve of Yom Kippur. Pnina Feldman sent an email on Oct. 3 to Manny Waks, the only Jewish child sex abuse victim in Australia to have gone public. “I haven’t met a person…
-
Fast Forward Anti-Semitic Leaflets Hit Australia Jewish Suburbs
Anti-Semitic flyers were dropped in the mailboxes of private homes in Jewish suburbs in Sydney. Residents of Bondi Beach and Double Bay, which contain large numbers of Sydney’s 40,000-plus Jewish community, found the flyer in their mailboxes on Monday. “Wake up Australia,” reads the flyer. “Jews have been kicked out of countries 109 times through…
-
Fast Forward Australian Jewish School Evacuated By Bomb Scare
Students at a Jewish school in Melbourne were evacuated amid a bomb scare. More than 200 students at the King David School were moved off the campus after 8 a.m. Thursday when security personnel found an abandoned van containing a suspicious object near the school. The Australian Jewish community’s Community Security Group alerted local police,…
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Why do Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas?
- 2
Sports First Puka Nacua, now Mookie Betts: Why do sports stars keep getting antisemitic around a Jewish streamer?
- 3
Culture We tried to fix Hallmark’s Hanukkah problem. Here’s the movie we made instead
- 4
Holy Ground One of America’s first Jewish farms was nearly lost to history. Now these Brooklyn parents are risking everything to keep their family’s legacy alive.
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward 82 years after his plane was shot down in China, Jewish WWII pilot Morton Sher is laid to rest at home
-
Fast Forward Trump administration Christmas messages emphasize Jesus in overtly religious terms
-
Fast Forward A whites-only, no-Jews community says it’s found a legal loophole. A Jewish lawmaker in Pennsylvania wants to close it.
-
Culture On Instagram, ‘Rabbinic Fit Check’ is a look book for Jewish clergy
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism