Jewish News

Yeshiva School Teacher Killed In Brooklyn Crash

A 23-year-old man is facing charges after police said he was driving drunk and speeding when he killed a popular Brooklyn teacher.He was 25 and very much admired but on Tuesday night Moshe Berkowitz was being mourned following his shocking death on Monday.“Nobody deserves to die this way,” Yisreol Weiss told CBS 2’s Sean Hennessey.Read More: @ newyork.cbslocal.comReaders found more information ...

Yeshiva Graduates Among Israel’s Best Soldiers

Two members of the Chabad-Lubavitch community in Israel were among the 120 soldiers who received this year’s Presidential Award for Excellence during a nationally-televised ceremony Thursday morning in Jerusalem.According to a statement from Israeli President Shimon Peres’ office, the class of Israel Defense Force honorees included two wounded soldiers, 40 women, 17 new immigrants, 11 “lone soldiers,” 19 officers and ...

Yesh Atid MK: Plight of Agunot is Solvable

The Knesset held a special session on Wednesday morning to discuss the issue of agunot, or “chained women” whose husbands refuse to give them a bill of divorce, thereby preventing them from getting remarried.The conference was an initiative of Yesh Atid MK Aliza Lavie and the International Coalition for Aguna Rights, ahead of International Aguna Day, which takes place as ...

Yemeni immigrant fined for Torah scroll

Israel’s suffocating tax policy appears to appeal to holy items as well: A Yemeni Jew arrived in Israel recently with a Torah scroll rescued from the enemy country. While Yemen’s authorities let him leave with the scroll, as did Egypt when he passed through, the Israeli authorities were the only ones to cause problems.The man, Yosef Hamadi, left the city of Rida ...

‘Yated Ne’eman’ slams Amar for accepting IDF conversions

The mouthpiece for the Lithuanian-Ashkenazi-haredi rabbinic leadership slammed Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar on Monday for his recent statement that conversions conducted in the IDF are halachically valid.“Rabbis and senior rabbinical judges in the Holy Land and Diaspora are openly and firmly protesting the severe breach in maintaining the pedigree and sanctity of the people of Israel, following the chief ...

Yated metes out cautious criticism at Yosef, Amar

Haredi-Lithuanian newspaper Yated Ne’eman on Sunday expressed “shock, as well as pained and utter protest over the desecration of approving thousands of military ‘conversions,’” in its inevitable reaction to the Friday decision of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, to declare disputed past IDF conversions kosher.Following Yosef’s ruling, Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar on the same day issued the necessary document to authorize ...

Yaldah Magazine to Be Published Monthly

Eight years after its initial release, Yaldah Magazine, the successful Orthodox publication written by Jewish girls for Jewish girls continues to grow and in response to reader request, is switching over from a quarterly to a monthly format.“From the very beginning, our readers told us that putting out four magazines a year just wasn’t enough,” Leah Caras, founder and publisher ...

Yad Vashem Collects Possessions from Aging Holocaust Survivors

When Stella Knobel’s family fled World War II Poland in 1939, the only thing the 7-year-old girl could take with her was her teddy bear. For the next six years, the stuffed animal never left her side as the family wondered through the Soviet Union, to Iran and finally the Holy Land.“He was like family. He was all I had. ...

Yad Vashem and Google partner to preserve and share Holocaust archives

The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and Google have announced a partnership to put the world’s largest collection of Holocaust documents onto the Internet in order to preserve and access these archives.The announcement came Wednesday, on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27 marking the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi extermination camp by Soviet troops in 1945.The ...

Yad L’Achim Faces Off Against Tnuva

This story begins in Kibbutz Herdoff in the Lower Galil, a community located in the Jezreel Valley Region. The community, which was founded about 30 years ago boasts a profitable organic industry, but Yad L’Achim explains things are not as innocent as they appear, reporting the community follows Anthroposophy, a spiritual philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, which R’ Lifshitz explains ...

WSJ’s ‘Holy’ Front Page Creates Problems for Religious Jews

Will Jewish readers of the Wall Street journal have to keep last Friday’s edition forever? That was the question raised by the JTA news agency after the front page of The Wall Street Journal featured an article on the perils of dropping the Torah scroll during “hagbah”, the Torah-lifting ritual.The problem arose because of the fact that the story included ...

Worst NYC Gridlock in Decade: Obama, Rock Center Tree Lighting To Cause Traffic Nightmare

Three events will converge in New York tomorrow that will contribute to epic gridlock, making travel in and around the city impossible in spots.The tree-lighting at Rockefeller Center, in and of itself is a cause of major gridlock.The New York Daily News’s “Gridlock Sam” predicts that “miles of frozen streets” will “await anyone crazy enough to attempt driving into Manhattan.” ...