A voice vote in the US Senate Monday approved legislation that will award Israeli President Shimon Peres with the US Congressional Gold Medal. Peres joins the ranks of other recipients such as Natan Sharansky, Elie Wiesel, and Simon Wiesenthal. With his term ending in July, the 90-year-old president will meet atContinue Reading
With the search for the over 200 missing Nigerian schoolgirls abducted last month by Islamist rebel group continuing, Israel has send a group of intelligence experts to Nigeria to aid in the efforts. The team, which Israeli official said included individuals with training and experience in dealing in hostage situations,Continue Reading
By Joel Magalnick, Editor, The Jewish Sound On his blog at Macklemore.com, the local rap star explains that the costume he wore at his concert Friday night was not in any way intended to depict Jewish stereotypes. As he wrote: Family, friends and fans alike who know me well, knowContinue Reading
ROME (JTA) — Maccabi Tel Aviv upset favored Real Madrid to win the Euroleague basketball championship. Maccabi defeated the Spanish squad, 98-86, in overtime on Sunday night in Milan in the title game. Tyrese Rice led the Israeli club with 26 points, including 14 in overtime. The game was tiedContinue Reading
(JTA) – Israel sent aid to help rescue efforts in flood-ravaged Serbia and Bosnia. Local media reported that Israel sent a first shipment of emergency aid this weekend including medicine, food, blankets and rain gear, and will soon send pumps. The aid was delivered by helicopter because submerged cities wereContinue Reading
With a rise in contemporary anti-semitism in France, a new survey reveals that 75% of Jews harbor a desire to leave the country. JTA reports today that, of the nearly four thousand Jews polled by Paris Siona organization of Sephardic French Jews, three quarters of French Jews said they haveContinue Reading
JTA reports today that six Israeli runners were excluded from the West Bank portion of a regional long-distance peace run, which ended Monday. Led by Australian ultra-marathoner Paul Farmer, the course began in Lebanon and made its way through Israel and the West Bank, with the finish line in Jerusalem. TheContinue Reading
Tablet Magazine asks the question, given that it took a month before international media even began to pay attention to the nearly 300 girls kidnapped in Nigeria in April.Continue Reading
University of Washington professor emeritus Edward Alexander slaps down Jewish proponents of the movement to boycott Israel and divest from companies that do business with it on university campuses. In the Algemeiner.Continue Reading
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Iraqi government is extending the stay of the Iraqi Jewish Archive in the United States.“In order to continue this important work and to allow the exhibit to be displayed in other cities in the United States, the Government of Iraq has authorized me to extend theContinue Reading
The Kutscher resort, one of the remaining remnants of “Jewish Borscht Belt” culture, will be demolished later this month. The Monticello, N.Y. hotel has occupied its space in both the Catskills and Jewish American culture for more than a century. The site opened as the Kutscher’s Brothers Farm House inContinue Reading
Despite claims by Vladimir Putin that everyone else is blaming the world’s woes on the Jews, it appears that videos from the Kremlin’s TV station are doing just that, according to a story from The New Republic.Continue Reading
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Israel has launched a campaign to have Yom Kippur recognized as an official holiday on the United Nations calendar. The U.N. officially recognizes 10 holidays, including Christmas and Eid al-Fitr. Absent from the official holidays is a Jewish one. A holiday at the U.N. entails aContinue Reading
By Anthony Weiss, JTA World News LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Not every celebrity endorsement is a welcome one. The saga of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling took yet another bizarre turn when he went on national television this week and started touting the virtues of Jewish mutual aid organizations.Continue Reading
Today, the Forward revisits the Pew Research Center survey, which has occupied a great deal of discussion and concern amongst Jewish professionals throughout the US since its release in October of last year. The current analysis, prepared for the Forward by Steven M. Cohen, a professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish InstituteContinue Reading
By Uriel Heilman, JTA World News Service NEW YORK (JTA) – A lot of people around the world hate the Jews. That’s the main finding of the Anti-Defamation League’s largest-ever worldwide survey of anti-Semitic attitudes. The survey, released Tuesday, found that 26 percent of those polled — representing approximately 1.1 billionContinue Reading
Maramures County in northern Transylvania is opening its first Holocaust education center, The Holocaust Cellar, on Sunday, May 18. The town is the childhood home in Romania of Nobel Prize-winning author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. The site of the new center is in the old Jewish ghetto of Sighet in MaramuresContinue Reading
By Rafael Medoff, JTA World News Service WASHINGTON (JTA) — On the outskirts of Cairo, on a blistering hot afternoon in May 1942, British Army chaplain Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz ordered the driver of his military transport truck to pull over for a group of uniformed women who were hitchhiking. “WeContinue Reading
Canadian Heritage Minister Glover, Foreign Affairs Minister Baird and Multiculturalism Minister Uppal announced this morning the team that will create a national Holocaust monument in Ottawa, Canada. The team includes world-renowned architect Daniel Liebeskind and led by Gail Dexter Lord, co-president of Toronto-based Lord Cultural Resource, which was responsible forContinue Reading
Martin L. Johnson and Olinda Young of Phoenix, Arizona, have generously donated a 250-year-old Torah that was recovered from the Nazis to Virginia Commonwealth University. The couple are art and antique collectors with an interest in old Bibles. This is the not first Torah they have acquired and donated, butContinue Reading
