Jewish News

Lost Jewish Tombstones Found in Greece

In a find that local Jewish groups have described as highly significant, Greek police said last week that hundreds of marble headstones and other fragments from Jewish graves destroyed during the Nazi occupation in World War II have been recovered.The 668 fragments were found buried in a plot of land in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, following a 70-year search ...

San Francisco’s Only Kosher Market to Close

The owner of San Francisco’s only kosher market says she is closing her doors.Israel’s Strictly Kosher Market, which opened its doors 65 years ago, will close in March, owner Faina Avrutina told the J weekly. Avrutina has been running the shop for the last 10 years. The store has belonged to her family for the last two generations, according to ...

$500M in Checks Left at Western Wall

Worshippers usually leave notes to the Almighty at one of Judaism’s holiest sites. But half a billion dollars?Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, who oversees Jerusalem’s Western Wall, said a worshipper found an envelope at the site Wednesday with 507 checks in the amount of about $1 million each. They were not addressed to anyone, and it’s doubtful they can be cashed.Rabinovitch said ...

Inouye, Stalwart Israel Advocate in US Senate, Dies

Daniel Inouye, the long-serving Japanese-American Democratic senator who – though representing Hawaii, a state with only a tiny Jewish population – was considered by many as Israel’s best friend in the US Senate, died on Monday.He was 88.“Shalom and Aloha,” he told a group of Jerusalem high school students in his deep, bass voice in January, during his last visit ...

Chabad Spends NIS 1.5M on Hanukkah

Take a moment to lean back and remember whether one of the sufganiyot you ate during Hanukkah was served to you by a smiling Chabadnik. If you indeed recall such a situation, you must be one of the 384,615 Israeli citizens for whom Chabad’s youth organization bought the holiday treat for the wholesale price of NIS 1.3 ($0.34) per unit.A ...

Dead Sea Scrolls Online Library Launched

The public is invited to experience, view, examine, and explore this collection of over 5000 images of Dead Sea Scrolls, in a quality never seen before.The library was assembled over the course of two years, in collaboration with Google, using advanced technology first developed by NASA. It includes some 1000 new images of scroll fragments; 3500 scans of negatives from ...

CAY Marks 2 Years, Permanent Location, New Torah

On the first day of Chanukah Chevra Ahavas Yisroel held a benefit dinner marking two years to the founding of the Shul and their new permanent location. The dinner was preceded by a Siyum and Hachnosas Sefer Torah to the Shul.The festivities began on the first light of Chanukah, Sunday afternoon, with the Sidof family completing the writing a new ...

Hebrew to be Nixed as Foreign Language in U.K. Schools, Jewish Chronicle Reports

The British government is reportedly planning to exclude Hebrew from a list of recognized foreign languages in the national education system.The Board of Deputies of British Jews warned last week that the exclusion of Hebrew could damage Jewish education in the country, the Jewish Chronicle reported.Education Minister Elizabeth Truss announced plans last month to make it compulsory, from September 2014, ...

Netanyahu: Western Wall ‘Will be Ours Forever’

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reiterated his claim from a Western Wall candle-lighting ceremony that the site “will be ours forever.” Netanyahu made the claim Sunday at the weekly Cabinet meeting the morning after making the same assertion the night before during a ceremony at the Wall on the eighth and final night of Hanukka.At the meeting, the prime minister said ...

Torah and Hanukkah Unite Reps. Cantor and Shultz

Torah and the Hanukkah holiday combined their strength to bring together rival Congressmen Eric Cantor and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz for completion of a “unity” Torah scroll sponsored by El Al Airlines.El Al initiated the “Torah Scroll for Israel Unity” last year. The Torah scroll will be flown on special flights of national and historic significance and will also serve worshipers at ...

Before Meeting with the President, Visiting the Ohel

Twenty Seven souls were brutally extinguished in a single act of inconceivable violence in the Sandy Hook Elementary School. Amazing tales of heroism have emerged from within this tragedy and the community has come together in support of one another. Before President Barak Obama arrived for a visit local Shluchim have already been offering moral support.Rabbi Yisrael Deren, head Shliach ...

Ravens Dismisses NFL Season Opener on Rosh Hashanah

The Baltimore Ravens and the NFL have agreed that the Super Bowl champions will not open their season – or the league’s season – on the first night of Rosh Hashanah.The team was scheduled to launch its season on September 5, a Thursday night, but a conflict with baseball’s Baltimore Orioles forced a scheduling change.With the Ravens’ M&T Bank Stadium ...