Category: World News

MADRID (JR) — Political tensions escalated between Israel and Spain this past week as Spanish Jews reeled from a series of incidents outside synagogues. Ione Belarra, Spain’s acting social rights minister, called to “urgently suspend diplomatic relations with the state of Israel” on Wednesday, citing Israel’s response in Gaza to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks that […]

(JR) — When Jennifer Podemski’s Indigenous mother gave birth at 17, social workers removed Podemski from a Toronto hospital and put her into the foster care system. It was only through the efforts of one social worker, who was retiring, that she was reunited with her mother at three months old. The social worker had […]

(JR) — In what’s being touted as a first for a Jewish organization, the World Jewish Congress advocacy group opened an office in Vatican City to liaise with Catholic leaders and further Catholic-Jewish relations. WJC President Ronald Lauder visited Pope Francis while inaugurating the organization’s “representative office to the Holy See” on Thursday. Lauder, a billionaire […]

(JR) — The installation stretches across the entire plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art — a table for 200, pristinely set for Shabbat yet searingly empty. The high chairs at a handful of seats, the children’s cups in other settings and the white roses alongside some of the plates make the symbolism painfully […]

(JR) – A historic but defunct synagogue in Tunisia was reduced to rubble on Tuesday amid mass rioting after an explosion in Gaza that Hamas blamed on Israel. Hundreds of people were filmed setting fire to a synagogue in the central Tunisian city of Al Hammah in the hours after the explosion, at a Gaza […]

BUENOS AIRES (JR) — The U.S. and Israeli embassies in Argentina’s capital received bomb threats via email on Wednesday, including one that read “Jews we are going to kill you all.” Federal police evacuated the areas around the two embassies — one in the city, the other in a suburb — and helicopters patrolled the […]

(JR) — Unknown perpetrators threw two Molotov cocktails at a Berlin synagogue early on Wednesday morning, leading German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to declare that “antisemitism has no place in Germany.” “We will never accept when attacks are carried out against Jewish institutions,” Scholz said during a trip to Egypt tied to the escalating tensions of […]

(JR) — Italy’s government unanimously approved a bill to establish a Holocaust museum in Rome on Wednesday, 80 years after the Nazis rounded up over 1,000 Roman Jews to be deported and exterminated. Initially proposed as Italy’s first Holocaust museum in 2005, the project has been mired in financial and bureaucratic delays. Prime Minister Giorgia […]

MADRID (JR) — Portugal’s parliament has advanced a bill that would end the country’s citizenship law for descendants of Sephardic Jews who were expelled during the Spanish Inquisition. The bill, which could take effect on Jan. 1, passed a first reading on Friday with backing from the ruling Socialist Party after heated debate. It will […]

(JR) — A best-selling German author and philosopher apologized for saying during an episode of his podcast that Judaism bars Orthodox Jews from working, “except for a few things like diamond trading and a few financial transactions.” The show’s moderator and co-producer, Markus Lanz, immediately agreed with Richard David Precht, saying “correct” and “accurate,” during […]