Author: David Leibermann

MIAMI (JTA) — It was a familiar narrative: Israel, ever the underdog, was down and running out of time. Then, just when it seemed hopeless, they pulled off a thrilling comeback. It wasn’t Purim, or Passover, or even Hanukkah. It was Team Israel’s opening game in the World Baseball Classic. Israeli-American pitcher Dean Kremer, a […]

(JTA) — The actor Noa Nishby has gone to bat for Israel on U.S. college campuses as an official emissary of her home country. The philanthropist Miriam Adelson has underwritten multiple organizations dedicated to building pro-Israel sentiment in the United States. And now both prominent advocates for Israel have publicly joined what is turning out […]

(JTA) — Saudi Arabia has taken significant steps this week toward better relations with two countries that see each other as sworn adversaries: Israel and Iran. On Thursday, the kingdom set terms for what it would need from the United States as a price for normalizing relations with Israel: a security agreement of some kind […]

(JTA) — In the early 1960s, a Bulgarian-born scientist named Raphael Mechoulam was caught carrying five kilograms of, as he called it, “superb, smuggled Lebanese hashish” on a bus from Tel Aviv to Rehovot. But he wasn’t planning on smoking the stuff. Mechoulam was a fledgling researcher keen on exploring the science behind cannabis, a […]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The leading institutions of the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements are among a coalition of liberal Jewish groups calling on American Jews to snub Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, when he visits the United States next week. But the Orthodox Union, an umbrella organization for Orthodox Jews, has confirmed to JTA […]

This is a developing story. WASHINGTON (JTA) — A gunman shot and wounded three people outside a cafe on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, striking a lively area of the city on Thursday night, the beginning of the weekend in Israel. It is the latest act of violence in a period of escalation in the […]

JUPITER, Florida (JTA) — In the squad’s first-ever exhibition game against an MLB team, Team Israel lost 11-5 against the Miami Marlins on Wednesday night in a tuneup before the World Baseball Classic. Israel had taken a 5-2 lead into the bottom of the fifth inning, but the Marlins scored three runs in both the […]

If an alien spacecraft landed in Dr. Avi Loeb’s backyard tomorrow, he would readily step on, leave his family behind and take off to discover the great beyond. Obviously, he’d be giving up a lot, but it’s for an essential cause, he says: Humans need to explore the possibilities for human life beyond earth. “We […]

(JTA) — Hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to oppose the government’s planned judicial reform on Saturday night, but within hours Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition advanced the legislation through the Knesset. Protests against the reforms extended to areas of Israel’s establishment where political protest was once unthinkable, including among combat pilots […]

(JTA) — Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire media mogul, philanthropist and former New York mayor, is the latest pro-Israel stalwart to warn that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms could be catastrophic. “Close allies bound together by shared values stand together in times of need — not only to support each other but to reaffirm […]