Women are permitted to dance with a Torah scroll on the Simchat Torah holiday, a national-religious rabbinical organization has ruled. The Beit Hillel organization posted the religious ruling on its website. The ruling also encourages synagogues to be more inclusive of the elderly, the youth and people with disabilities during the holiday celebration, which includes…
A Torah scroll that has spent more than 100 years in a British museum was returned to its Jewish community, the Falmouth Packet newpaper reported. The Torah was one of four scrolls that had been kept in the Royal Cornwall Museum since the closing of the Falmouth Synagogue in 1892. The 250-year-old Torah scroll was…
A former hotel security guard was sentenced to four years in prison for defacing a Memphis Jewish school’s Torah scroll and prayer books. Justin Shawn Baker, 25, was sentenced Tuesday in Madison County Circuit Court, according to the Jackson Sun. Baker pleaded guilty earlier this month, admitting in court to violating the civil rights of…
What is being described as the oldest Torah scroll known to exist has been discovered in the library of the University of Bologna. The parchment scroll, 36 meters long and 64 cm high, previously had been wrongly catalogued as dating from the 17th century, a university statement said. “Instead, ‘Roll 2′ was copied in a…
A Bronx synagogue suffered a terrible blow this week: the theft of three sifrey-Torah, or Torah scrolls, each one worth $45,000. The theft at the Orthodox shul, Young Israel of Mosholu Parkway, on East 208th Street in the Norwood Heights section, was discovered by a worker last Sunday. Besides the Torah scrolls, the thief also…
At least 63 synagogues in the New York area suffered damage from Hurricane Sandy, along with several in New Jersey, a Forward investigation reveals. UJA-Federation, which is compiling data on Hurricane Sandy’s impact on Jewish institutions, reports that so far, it has heard from 64 synagogues in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County…
Members of a Kansas City synagogue have come to the aid of Jewish Hurricane Sandy victims in Long Island by donating a Torah scroll to a synagogue that lost four. Kehilath Israel Synagogue, an Orthodox synagogue in Overland Park, Kan., which has more than 15 Torah scrolls, is donating a Torah scroll to Congregation Ahavas…
When Rabbi Avremel Okonov arrived Tuesday morning at the school he co-founded 10 years ago in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, the water in the basement had already receded from the high water mark. It only came up to his knees. Everywhere he looked around his school, Mazel Academy, there was destruction. On the…
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