(JTA) — The man who opened fire on a synagogue in Poway, California in 2019, killing one and injuring three, has pleaded guilty to a 113-count federal hate crime indictment. The guilty plea comes with a recommended sentence of life in prison plus 30 years. The charges the shooter faced, which also relate to his […]
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(JTA) — An officer from the Israel Defense Forces will be reprimanded after he was filmed injuring and teargassing left-wing activists in the West Bank, with one video showing him kneeling on an activist’s neck. Multiple Israeli politicians condemned the officer’s conduct, with one defending it. The activists were attempting to bring water to a […]
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(JTA) — Before the Spanish Inquisition, the island of Mallorca had a sizeable Jewish community. Every fall, the island became dotted with the leaf-roofed huts that Jews are commanded to erect during the holiday of Sukkot. But that all changed under the Inquisition’s campaign of persecution that began in 1488 (four years before it started […]
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(JTA) — Several Israeli philanthropists have helped bring to Abu Dhabi dozens of asylum seekers, including female athletes, fleeing Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The rescue operation led by Aaron G. Frenkel, an aviation professional who had helped airlift thousands of Jews out of the Soviet Union, ended on Sept. 6, as 41 asylum seekers from […]
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(JTA) — A Torah scroll that the Nazis stole from for their planned museum on Judaism in Prague will return to use there on Simchat Torah, a holiday that falls later this month and celebrates the seminal Jewish text. Memorial Scrolls Trust, a London-based nonprofit that preserves Torah scrolls and other scripture, on Sunday said […]
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(JTA) — Local Jewish leaders are fuming about repeated security breaches at a large Jewish cemetery in the Buenos Aires area. Just before Yom Kippur last week, three vandals were caught trying to make off with 223 of the cemetery’s gravestones — the third such robbery in the past month. Over 100 headstones were smashed […]
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Job is the biblical poster child for acute suffering. When Satan makes a bet with God that the righteous and prosperous Job will cease to praise God in the absence of worldly comforts, God takes the bet and allows Satan to torment Job, to remove his wealth, kill his children and destroy his health. Job’s […]
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(JTA) — We are in an era of multiple interlocking crises. From record-breaking heat waves to wildfires to water shortages, from rising authoritarianism to a pandemic rampaging across the world, it is clear that, to survive, human beings will need to make urgent, major changes to how we live. Bold policy proposals already exist to […]
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Pictured left to right BGU VP for Global Engagement Prof. Limor Aharonson-Daniel, BGU President Prof. Daniel Chamovitz, BGU Rector Prof. Chaim Hames (BGU press pic) A year after the signing of the Abraham Accords, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Israel and Université Internationale de Rabat (UIR) in Morocco signed a historic Memorandum of […]
Continue ReadingTHIS SPRING AND SUMMER, as violence engulfed Israel-Palestine and antisemitic attacks in the US made media headlines, some hawkish Jewish commentators began using an arresting phrase to describe Jews who oppose the Jewish state. In a tweet in May, UCLA professor Judea Pearl proposed that just as Jewish leaders in the 17th century excommunicated the […]
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