The community of Kaifeng held one of the first Seder meals to be held by indigenous Chinese Jews in generations this week.
The Shavei Israel organization aims at helping people of Jewish descent to “rediscover or renew their link with the people of Israel.”
By i24news
Amsterdam’s municipal authorities have reportedly been collecting property tax, including fines for late payments, from Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, billing them over time periods spent in Nazi concentration camps, or in hiding.
Photo courtesy Yad Vashem
The reported policy is potentially all the more scandalous as the Dutch have been widely lauded for their compassionate treatment of Jews during the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in the course of WWII, including concealing many Jews from their German persecutors. Continue Reading »
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent his condolences to the families of those killed in Sunday’s shootings at two Jewish centers in Overland Park Kansas.
Dr. William Lewis Corporon and grandson & Reat Griffin Underwood, a 14-year-old high school freshman – Photo Courtesy
“We condemn the shootings which, according to all the signs, were perpetrated out of hatred for Jews,” Netanyahu said Monday of the attack, allegedly carried out by a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, the Jewish religion faced one of its greatest challenges: adapting to this new reality, in which a central focus of religious observance was suddenly and brutally gone.
Dayenu in the the Birds’ Head Haggadah manuscript, South Germany. c.- 1300 Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons/Sodabottle
The Jewish leadership reestablished the Sanhedrin, the Jewish legal council recognized by the Romans, in the city of Yavne. Handed the daunting task of leading the Jewish people down a new road was Rabban Gamaliel II, who resided over the Sanhedrin assembly as Nasi.
By Gil Ronen and Ari Soffer
Police have “lost control of the Temple Mount,” Temple activists charged Monday morning, on the eve of Pesach.
Hamas on Temple Mount – YouTube Screenshot
Dozens of Hamas men have taken over the Mount, waving Hamas flags, and are “not allowing Jews and tourists into the Mount,” said the activists.
“Hundreds of Jews who came to the Temple Mount for Pesach were astonished to find a police representative standing at the entrance gate and announcing that the Mount had been closed off to Jews after Hamas had taken over the Mount and threatened violence against any Jews who enter,” the Temple organizations reported in a news communique. Continue Reading »
By JTA
The parents of a Jewish student at an exclusive girls’ school in London are angry over an incident in which a teacher told their daughter that she would be sent “to one of your gas chambers.”
Auschwitz death showers – Photo: IsraelandStuff/PP
The incident at North London Collegiate School occurred in January, London’s Daily Mail reported on Sunday.
By JTA
Resisting calls to ban the non-medical circumcision of boys, the governments of Norway and Denmark have taken steps to preserve the practice’s legal status.
Health Minister Bent Høie on the podium at the Parliament in Oslo. – Photo: Thomas Winje Øijord/NTB Scanpix
Norway’s health ministry has submitted a bill that proposes placing some limitations and fees on ritual circumcision but not banning it outright, while Denmark’s health board issued guidelines stating that the practice is legal.
U.S. contractor Alan Gross ended an eight-day hunger strike Friday to press for his release from prison in Cuba, AFP reported.
U.S. aid contractor Alan Gross and his wife Judy – Reuters
Gross moved to end his protest after a telephone conversation with his mother, who will turn 92 years old on Tuesday, according to defense attorney Scott Gilbert.
“My protest fast is suspended as of today,” Gross said in a statement dictated from his Havana prison to Gilbert, according to AFP. Continue Reading »
By Moran Azulay & Attila Somfalvi
Bayit Yehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett reiterated Friday that his party would send Israel to elections if the government decided to free Palestinian prisoners, namely a group of Israeli-Arab terrorists, as part of attempts to salvage peace talks, after the party held a faction meeting.
Bayit Yehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett – CNN YouTube screenshot
Meanwhile, political sources within the Likud hinted some of the more rightist members in the party would also quit should such a deal pass. Continue Reading »
By Margarita Erbach
A 74-year-old Holocaust survivor was told he was Nazi because he spoke Dutch while traveling on a bus to Tel Aviv.
Metropoline bus – Photo: Omni bus simulator
Martin Leeda moved to Israel after surviving three Nazi concentration camps. Today he divides his time between Israel and the Netherlands, where he works as a guide in the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam, and is an active part of the Jewish community there. Continue Reading »
Responding to escalating unrest in their country, hundreds of Jews have been fleeing Ukraine since the start of year and heading to Israel.
General view of Kiev’s Independence Square, the epicenter of the country’s recent unrest, Ukraine, on a mourning day Sunday, February 23, 2014. – Photo: AP
Preliminary figures indicate that the pace picked up markedly in recent weeks with more than 250 new immigrants from Ukraine registered at the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption since the beginning of April.
A Dutch Jewish organization rediscovered two ritual baths that had been forgotten after the Holocaust.
Groningen Folkingedwarsstraat synagogue – Photo: Google Street View
In reporting about the find Friday, the Crescas Jewish education institute wrote on its website that large parts of the 19th-century ritual baths, or mikvehs, were unearthed last week at a Jewish community building in the northern city of Groningen.
“The mikvehs are an exciting find,” Crescas wrote. “They are remarkably well-preserved. The marble of one of the baths was partially damaged during renovations.”
By JTA
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a Minnesota rabbi who claimed he was cut from an airline’s frequent flier program for earning too many miles.
Northwest Airlines Boeing 747-400
The court issued its unanimous ruling on Wednesday.
Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg was one of Northwest Airlines’ top fliers when he was cut from its program in 2008. Northwest has since been absorbed by Delta.
The rabbi, who acquired his frequent flier miles by consulting with educational organizations throughout the country, says the airline was targeting top miles earners. Continue Reading »
By Ynet
Three American hikers, who accidentally strayed over the Iranian border from northern Iraq during a hiking trip in 2009 and were imprisoned for more than two years, tell of their horrific ordeal at the Tehran prison in a new memoir. Two of the three Americans – Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd – recount the story of their engagement in jail – and the third – Josh Fattal – reveals that his captors knew he was Jewish. Continue Reading »
By i24News
CBN televangelist Pat Robertson – Photo credit: YouTube screenshot
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in its Annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, reported Tuesday that there were 751 incidents in 41 states and Washington, DC — among the lowest numbers since 1979.
The audit includes assault, vandalism and harassment targeting Jews and Jewish property and institutions.
“In the last decade we have witnessed a significant and encouraging decline in the number and intensity of anti-Semitic acts in America,” said Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director, in a statement. Continue Reading »
Many ‘Lone Soldiers’, who have no family in Israel, can use some help with doing their laundry, Shabbat meals, or the occasional ‘Care Package’ for upcoming holidays.
Check out lonesoldiercenter.com to see how you can help these brave, beautiful young people who volunteer to protect Israel.
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