COPENHAGEN, Denmark (JTA) — In 2015, a jihadist killed a Jewish guard outside this capital city’s main synagogue, where Hannah Bentow was having her bat mitzvah party. Her sense of security as a Jew in Denmark was shattered, she told JTA last week. Bentow and dozens of teenagers stayed inside for long uncertain minutes as police…
As an infant, I was circumcised by my doctor. As an adult, I circumcised myself. After 15 years of attending weekly services and actively participating in most every facet of synagogue life at Congregation Beth Emek in Pleasanton, California, I finally took the leap of faith and decided to formally convert to Judaism. My rabbi…
(JTA) — An impending vote in the Danish parliament on non-medical circumcision of boys risks splitting the country’s ruling party, local media are reporting. The internal conflict is over an online petition from February calling for a ban on the practice. The petition has received 92 percent of its authors’ goal of collecting 50,000 cosignatories…
Michael Cohen is asking Judge Kimba Wood to suppress legal documents related to his relationship with Donald Trump in his trial over payments to the pornographic actress Stormy Daniels. Wood, a federal judge, has certainly seen lighter moments in her time on the bench. In 2010, Wood gave a Jewish defense attorney the day off…
(JTA) REYKJAVIK, Iceland (JTA) — At a windswept harbor of this Nordic capital, a bearded man wearing a black hat dips eating utensils into the icy water while hissing from pain induced by the bitter cold. Perplexed by the spectacle, a caretaker helpfully offers to let the man and his three companions use a washing…
The politician behind a bill in Iceland that would ban circumcision on children younger than 18 admitted that she didn’t consult Jewish and Muslim groups who would be affected by the ban. “I didn’t think it was necessary to consult,” Silja Dögg Gunnarsdóttir, a member of parliament from the Progressive Party, told The Independent on…
Scandinavia is the darling of liberals the world over. Yet for Jews living in there, life isn’t all free health care and minimalist design. In Iceland, the tiny Jewish population is now facing the most serious legal challenge to male circumcision in Europe. A new bill that criminalizes circumcision of minors and penalizes parents and…
(JTA) — Hundreds of physicians in Iceland and some of Belgium’s top doctors came out in support of a bill proposing to criminalize nonmedical circumcision of boys in the Scandinavian island nation. The 500-odd Icelandic physician who backed the bill that was submitted last month to the Icelandic parliament cited the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki on…
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