By Maayan Jaffe, JNS.org In southern Israel, the next generation of Jewish pioneers is making the desert bloom. A group of young, Zionist, idealistic adults are cultivating a previously uninhabited area in the northwest Negev on Israel’s borders with Egypt and Gaza—growing tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, cauliflower, pomegranates, olives, and more.Continue Reading
By Janis Siegel, Jewish Sound Correspondent The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is now epidemic, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev virologist Dr. Leslie Lobel told the Jewish Sound. But what really worries the researcher, who has been working with three deadly viruses in Uganda for 12 years, is thatContinue Reading
(JNS.org) The White House on Wednesday attempted to distance itself from comments by an anonymous senior U.S. official who called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit.” “Certainly that’s not the administration’s view, and we think such comments are inappropriate and counter-productive,” Alistair Baskey, a spokesman for the National SecurityContinue Reading
By Uriel Heilman, JTA World News Service NEW YORK (JTA) – Tzipporah Laura LaFianza and her family have been living as Orthodox Jews for four years now. They reside in a heavily Jewish suburb of Washington, go to shul every Shabbat and keep a strictly kosher kitchen. But they’re notContinue Reading
By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA World News Service BRUSSELS (JTA) — A little over a year after a French court forced Twitter to remove some anti-Semitic content, experts say the ruling has had a ripple effect, leading other Internet companies to act more aggressively against hate speech in an effort toContinue Reading
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the light rail attack in Jerusalem that killed a 3-month-old girl. The Prime Minister’s Office spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, on his official Twitter feed identified the driver of the car that crashed Wednesday into the AmmunitionContinue Reading
By Michael Adam Latz, JTA World News Service MINNEAPOLIS (JTA) — Early last week, national faith leaders called rabbis, pastors, priests and imams to Ferguson, Mo., a city rife with racial violence and pain. Along with my rabbinic colleagues from Truah: The Rabbinic Call for Justice, I responded to theContinue Reading
NEW YORK (JTA) — Dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards collected millions of dollars in Social Security payments after being forced out of the United States, an investigation by The Associated Press found. The payments were made possible by a legal loophole that gave the U.S. JusticeContinue Reading
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The epidemic of violence permeates every sector of Israel, the country’s president, Reuven Rivlin, said in an address.“It is time to honestly admit that Israeli society is ill – and it is our duty to treat this disease,” Rivlin told the Israel Academy of Sciences and HumanitiesContinue Reading
By Ben Sales, JTA World News Service TEL AVIV (JTA) — The music pounded, the liquor flowed, dancers filled the floor and khinkali meat dumplings and kababi skewers — staples of traditional Georgian cuisines — sat on almost every table. That was back in February, before Nana Shrier, the owner ofContinue Reading
By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA World News Service THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — Loading a newly released video of a beheading in Syria on his smartphone, Nabil Abuznaid, the Palestinians’ ambassador here, shakes his head in disbelief. “Look at those animals,” he says, referring to the fighters from the ISIS jihadistContinue Reading
By Ron Kampeas, JTA World News Service WASHINGTON (JTA) — Ibrahim Barzak spent his childhood counting the days to weekends, when he would travel with his father to see friends in Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Ashdod and Jerusalem. For Barzak’s young sons, by contrast, the names of those cities conjure malevolent exotica.Continue Reading
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Adolf Hitler used the highly addictive drug crystal meth as part of his medical regimen of 74 medicines, according to a Daily Telegraph report on Saturday. Citing a 47-page document compiled by U.S. military intelligence on World War II, the report said Hitler tookContinue Reading
(JNS.org) The Israel Police and the Shin Bet security agency believe that dozens more Israeli Arabs are planning to join the Islamic State terror group after leaving Israel for Turkey or Jordan. Israeli authorities believe that at least 30 Israeli Arabs are already fighting for Islamic State, the al-Qaeda-affiliatedContinue Reading
(JNS.org) Jerusalem Police units stormed the Al-Aqsa mosque compound early Monday and prevented dozens of masked assailants from carrying out a planned attack, Israel Hayom reported. The assailants had gathered on the Temple Mount with rocks and fireworks. Overnight, the assailants gathered weapons and prepared Molotov cocktails inside the mosque. They barricaded theContinue Reading
By Uriel Heilman, JTA World News Service (This is part of a special report on conversion in America. Read our other pieces about who’s converting to Judaism, and about the 10 questions about Jewish conversion you want to know but are afraid to ask.) ORTHODOX Number of converts: Unknown. Over the last seven years,Continue Reading
By Uriel Heilman, JTA World News Service I understand you’re considering converting to Judaism. Shalom aleichem! What sort of conversion would you like? If Orthodox, the answer is no, no, no. Tradition dictates that prospective converts be rebuffed three times as a test of their true commitment. For a moreContinue Reading
(JTA) — Ralph Goldman, a former leader of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and a central figure in Israel’s establishment, has died at the age of 100.Goldman, who served under David Ben-Gurion as Israel’s envoy to the United States, died Tuesday in Jerusalem, where he had lived forContinue Reading
(JTA) — More than 350 anthropologists from around the world have endorsed a boycott of Israel and its academic institutions.The statement was posted Oct. 1 on the website jadaliyya.com with 231 signatories and a call for others to add their names to the list. By last Friday, the list had reached 360Continue Reading
(JTA) — Religious Jewish teens are far less likely to attempt suicide than their secular Jewish counterparts, a new study finds.The study, led by researchers from Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine and Clalit Health Service’s Geha Mental Health Center, and published last week in the journal European Psychology,Continue Reading
