Archive for Jewish News

| December 24, 2013
No comments

Ancient Jewish Texts Found in Afghan Cave to be Displayed Next Week

The ancient texts that were found in an Afghanistan genizah estimated to be 1000 years old, include the writings of Rabbi Saadiah Gaon, will be unveiled next week.

By Tova Dvorin

 

 

The National Library will hold a special event next week to debut ancient texts found in an Afghanistan genizah, or storage area for old Jewish texts. The texts are estimated to be over 1000 years old and include writings from post-Talmudic Jewish leader Rabbi Saadiah Gaon.

Professor Hagai Ben-Shammai, academic director of the National Library spoke to Arutz Sheva Monday about the event, and revealed that thousands of texts were found in the genizah – some dating back to the first century CE.  Continue Reading »

Category: Innovations & Discoveries, Jewish News | Tags: , ,
| December 23, 2013
No comments

In seeking deeper targets, Hamas increases homemade rockets’ range

 

 

Egypt’s closing of Hamas’ smuggling tunnels put and end to importing missiles & forces terrorist factions to invest more in making homemade weapons with better quality rockets.

By Alex Fishman

 

 

Hamas‘s military wing in the Gaza Strip is making a concerted effort to increase the range of its rockets by tens of kilometers.

The rocket fuel is poured into a plastic tube, then cut away and the fuel cylinder is inserted into the Qassam shell. A detonator is placed in the mixture. About 100 are made each night.

The extra range will let the terror organization pull off deeper attacks into Israel, even farther than the Gush Dan region achieved during Operation Pillar of Defense . Continue Reading »

Category: Jewish News | Tags: , ,
| December 22, 2013
No comments

To protest or not to protest? How to deal with anti-Israel activity on campus.

Some advocacy groups urge students to counter misinformation at anti-Israel events, but not through direct confrontation. The non-confrontational approach prevails at campuses across the country.

“If there’s a strong Israeli Apartheid Week, make sure you have a strong Israel Week,”

Cara Stern, Staff Reporter,

 

 

Should students tackle anti-Israel activities on campus head-on – setting up counter-events or even urging universities to ban groups and events from taking place – or is it best to downplay them in the hope of minimizing their impact?

York University students drape Israeli flags to counter an anti-Israel rally in 2009. - Photo source: The Canadian Jewish news

York University students drape Israeli flags to counter an anti-Israel rally in 2009. – Photo source: The Canadian Jewish News

That’s the central question for young pro-Israel advocates facing groups and individuals at their schools who are hostile to the Jewish state.

Continue Reading »
Category: Jewish News | Tags: , , , ,
| December 22, 2013
No comments

Edgar Bronfman dies at 84: Jewish Community Leader & Philanthropist

Longtime president of the World Jewish Congress, Edgar Bronfman fought for Jewish rights, championed community projects, & as philanthropist, took the lead to create & fund numerous projects that strengthen the Jewish identity among the young.

By

 

 

Edgar Bronfman, the billionaire former beverage magnate and leading Jewish philanthropist, died Saturday. He was 84.

Edgar Bronfman

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon listens to Edgar Bronfman, then president of the World Jewish congress, during a meeting in Jerusalem on October 2, 2002. – Photo: Reuters

As the longtime president of the World Jewish Congress, Bronfman fought for Jewish rights worldwide and led the successful fight to secure more than a billion dollars in restitution from Swiss banks for Holocaust victims and their heirs. Continue Reading »

Category: Jewish News | Tags: ,
| December 22, 2013
One comment

Obama grants clemency to 21 criminals but passes on Pollard

Bill Richardson, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Energy Secretary in the Clinton administration calls on US president to put Israeli agent on Christmas holiday clemency list.

By GIL HOFFMAN

 

 

 

US President Barack Obama granted clemency to 21 criminals over the weekend, as part of the pardons and commutations traditionally approved ahead of the Christmas holiday. Obama pardoned 13 criminals and commuted the sentences of eight.
Jonathan and Esther Pollard

Jonathan and Esther Pollard – Photo: Courtesy of Justice4JP

Most of the convicts on the list were drug dealers and thieves, some of whom would have received lesser sentences if convicted of the same crimes today.

Continue Reading »
Category: Jewish News | Tags:
| December 21, 2013
No comments

Interfaith cooperation saves Bradford synagogue

Faced with closure a year ago, today Bradford’s synagogue’s future is bright, a model of cross-cultural co-operation after a nearby mosque together with a few local Muslims stepped in.

 

It was around this time last year that the trustees of Bradford‘s final remaining synagogue faced a tough choice. The roof of the Grade II-listed Moorish building was leaking; there was serious damage to the eastern wall, where the ark held the Torah scrolls; and there was no way the modest subscriptions paid annually by the temple’s 45 members could cover the cost.

Bradford Synagogue

Zulfi Karim, secretary of Bradford Council of Mosques, and Rabi Rudi Leavor inside Bradford Synagogue.

Continue Reading »
Category: Jewish News | Tags: , , ,
| December 21, 2013
No comments

Jewish cemeteries feeling neglect & disrepair from lack of long-term plans

Lacking funds and having had no long-term plans, many U.S. Jewish cemeteries are in an awful state of neglect.

 

 

NEW YORK (JTA) — For years, the historic Jewish cemetery was so overgrown with weeds, plagued by toppled headstones, and littered with fallen branches, beer cans and snack-food wrappers that at least a quarter of its graves were impossible to reach.

A section of New York's Bayside Cemetery in Queens before a UJA-Federation-funded cleanup. (Courtesy of the Community Association for Jewish At-Risk Cemeteries)

A section of New York’s Bayside Cemetery in Queens before a UJA-Federation-funded cleanup. – Photo Courtesy of the Community Association for Jewish At-Risk Cemeteries

Even now, after a $140,000 cleanup and improved maintenance procedures, the 35,000-grave cemetery relies on the generosity of a non-Jewish volunteer to repair its tombstones, fences and mausoleums.

Continue Reading »
Category: Jewish News | Tags: ,
| December 19, 2013
No comments

Blekinge Sweden to seek ban on circumcision

Much of the intensification of efforts to ban ritual circumcision are by anti-immigration nationalists who seek to limit the effect that Muslim presence is having on Swedish society.

 

A county in Sweden is planning to ban non-medical circumcision of boys, its commissioner said.

Blekinge county, Sweden - Photo courtesy: Wikipedia Commons

Blekinge county, Sweden – Photo courtesy: Wikipedia Commons

Per-Ola Mattsson, commissioner of Blekinge County, said he would move ahead with plans to ban ritual circumcision by bringing the subject up in February with the county’s health board, according to an article published Thursday by the Sydöstran Daily.

According to Dagens Medicin, Mattsson, who is also chairman of the Public Health Board of Blekinge, said he opposed the practice because minors “have no possibility to say no to the surgery and therefore the county should not perform these procedures.”

Continue Reading »

Category: Jewish News | Tags: ,
| December 18, 2013
No comments

Damaged Torah scrolls from Iraqi trove buried in New York

 

Damaged Torah scrolls found amid discarded trove of more than 2,700 books & documents in a flooded Iraqi intelligence building basement were buried in a religious ceremony in a suburban New York cemetery.

By Associated Press

Torah scroll fragments found amid a trove of more than 2,700 books and documents in the flooded Iraqi intelligence building basement have been buried in a religious ceremony at a suburban New York cemetery.

Burial is method used for disposal of sacred objects deemed unfit for use under Jewish law - Photo: AP

Burial is method used for disposal of sacred objects deemed unfit for use under Jewish law – Photo: AP

“This project is somewhat reflective of the new Iraq,” said Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the US. Continue Reading »

Category: Jewish News | Tags: , ,
| December 17, 2013
No comments

Many American scholars regret ‘misguided’ ASA boycott of Israeli academia

ASA scholars stand behind the symbolic decision to boycott, but many of their colleagues worry that Israel-bashing has become too trendy in U.S. academia.

By

 

 

As the American Studies Association endorsed a boycott of Israeli universities and academic institutions Monday, colleagues at the Association for Jewish Studies gathered in Boston for their annual conference where several called the boycott “misguided” and even “offensive”.

Boycott Israel illustration.

Boycott Israel illustration. – Photo: Dreamstime

The ASA boycott, which is effectively more a symbolic than practical blow to Israel, was waged in protest of what the organization termed Israel’s human rights violations against Palestinians and its occupation of Palestinian lands. Continue Reading »

Category: Jewish News | Tags: , ,
| December 17, 2013
No comments

‘Pro-Israel’ discussion in NYC ends in insults, storming off the stage & recriminations

Commentary editor John Podhoretz storms off the stage at a ‘Pro-Israel’ debate at New York’s 92nd Street Y, leaving the panelists puzzled & the audience stunned.

By

 

When the planners at 92nd Street Y in New York decided to host a “community discussion” on Monday on the question “What it means to be pro-Israel in America?” they couldn’t know that they would be getting a clear-cut answer before the night was over.

New York's 92nd Street Y.

New York’s 92nd Street Y. – Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Because based on the course of the debate, “being pro-Israel in America” means ideological chasms, professional rivalries, frayed nerves, inflamed tempers, one of the participants storming out in a huff and then exchanging barbs and insults on the internet with the moderator. Continue Reading »

Category: Jewish News | Tags: , , ,
| December 17, 2013
No comments

Museum directors protest misleading term: ‘Polish death camps’

Directors of Polish museums of Nazi camps criticized the decision not open an investigation of the term ‘Polish death camps’ used by the German newspaper Rheinische Post.

WARSAW, Poland — Directors of museums located at the sites of former Nazi death camps are protesting a Polish prosecutor’s office decision not to initiate an investigation into the phrase “Polish death camps.”

Auschwitz Barracks - Photo: IsraelandStuff/PP

Auschwitz Barracks – Photo: IsraelandStuff/PP

On Monday, a joint letter to the Polish Attorney General and Polish Minister of Justice signed by the heads of state museums at Auschwitz, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Kulmhof, Stutthof, Gross-Rosen and Majdanek , criticized the decision not open an investigation, saying that it undermines national efforts to eradicate the use of the term.

Continue Reading »

Category: Jewish News | Tags: , ,
| December 17, 2013
No comments

Louis Farrakhan defends Kanye West against ADL objection to anti-Semitic generalization

Nation of Islam leader urges rapper Kanye West not to ‘bow to pressure’ by ADL suggestion to recant, says the performer was right and has no reasons to apologize.

By

 

 

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan defended Kanye West’s remarks on Jewish “connections” in a video released over the weekend and carried by the Hip-Hop DX website.

Louis Farrakhan

Minister Louis Farrakhan displays the book, “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,” during a speech on March 25, 2011.-  Photo: AP

In the video, Farrakjan urges the rapper not to “bow to pressure” by the Anti-Defamation League, which deemed the comments anti-Semitic and called on West to “take responsibility… and apologize” for his words. Continue Reading »

Category: Jewish News | Tags: , ,
| December 16, 2013
No comments

Israel extends arm to save American Jewish community

 

 

Representatives of the 2 largest Jewish populations met in Jerusalem last month to discuss how to maintain the American Jewish community despite political & religious disagreements.

Associated Press

 

More than 100 Israeli leaders gathered with Jewish-American counterparts in Jerusalem last month with a daunting mission: to save Jewish life in North America.

Los Angeles Jews celebrate Thanksgivukkah (Photo: AP)

Los Angeles Jews celebrate Thanksgivukkah – Photo: AP

Jewish American leaders have known for years that assimilation and intermarriage were slowly shrinking their communities, but the early November gathering took on an extra sense of urgency. Just weeks earlier, a landmark study had found that young American Jews are growing increasingly estranged from Judaism. Continue Reading »

Category: Jewish News | Tags: , ,
| December 14, 2013
No comments

Oxford and Cambridge Join to Purchase Ancient Jewish Archive

2 of Europe’s most prominent universities, & oldest rivals, come together to buy an impressive trove of 1000 yr-old Jewish manuscripts, including a handwritten parchment by Maimonides.

By

 

 

Preeminent British universities Oxford and Cambridge raised 1.2 million pound to purchase the Lewis-Gibson genizah collection, the BBC reported Wednesday.

Text from the Cairo geniza.

Text from the Cairo geniza. – Photo: Olivier Fitoussi

The universities, two of the oldest and highest-ranking institutions for higher education in the world, decided this February to put aside their historic professional rivalry and launch their first joint fund-raising campaign. With the immense sum raised, the “ancient universities” can now purchase the collection from its current owner, the United Reform Church’s Westminster College. Continue Reading »

Category: Jewish News | Tags: , , ,
« Older Entries   Recent Entries »