Jewish News

New York’s Yeshiva University Engulfed in Controversy over Jimmy Carter Peace Award

Tensions are flaring at New York’s prestigious Yeshiva University and its Cardozo School of Law in the wake of growing protests against a decision to bestow an “International Advocate for Peace Award” on former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.The award, handed out by Cardozo’s student-run Journal of Conflict Resolution, is to be given to Carter on Wednesday at a ceremony at ...

New York rabbis ban Jewish women from wearing tank tops (despite searing heatwave)

New York rabbis have banned Jewish women from wearing tank tops and short skirts – even as the state is gripped by a heatwave that has sent the mercury touching 100F.The Central Rabbinical Congress has placed posters everywhere in trendy South Williamsburg demanding women dress modestly despite the roasting weather.The posters, written in Yiddish, tell women to avoid wearing tank ...

New York Rabbi Who Helped Liberate Buchenwald Dies

Rabbi Herschel Schacter, a Jewish chaplain in the U.S. army who in 1945 raced through the Buchenwald concentration camp to announce that prisoners were free, has died in New York at the age of 95, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.Schacter was the first Jewish chaplain to arrive in the Nazi death camp Buchenwald with the American army, and ...

Jewish Leaders: Synagogues Should be More Accessible

Hundreds of synagogue gabbais (sextons), heads of religious local authorities and rabbis from Israel and around the world participated in a special conference in Jerusalem on Sunday evening.The conference was organized by the Besheva group, which includes the weekly Hebrew newspaper Besheva as well the Arutz Sheva website. Other co-organizers included the Israeli Chief Rabbinate and the Union of Synagogues in Israel.At the center ...

Jewish leaders react with mixed feelings to passage of U.S. budget bill

Jewish leaders reacted with mixed feelings to the passage of a U.S. bill on Tuesday that will allow the U.S. government to continue borrowing money – so long as it makes certain budget cuts. The bill was passed in both houses on Congress following several weeks of nerve-wracking negotiations between U.S. Democratic and Republican lawmakers and the Obama administration.The House ...

Jewish leaders reach out to public school kids in effort to deter hate crimes

Jewish leaders Tuesday began talking to Williamsburg public school students after a rash of hate crimes in the neighborhood targeting Hasidic residents.Hasidic and Hispanic residents have lived side by side in the neighborhood for years – but rarely talk to each other or understand much about each others’ worlds.For the students at Intermediate School 318, what they heard about how ...

Jewish Leaders Rally In Support Of WTC Mosque

A group of Jewish leaders rallied Thursday in support of the mosque near the World Trade Center. The Shalom Center representatives say they needed to speak out after the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group that advocates religious freedom, criticized the Cordoba Initiative mosque and cultural center. “We need this Islamic center to preach love and respect in contrast ...

Jewish Leaders: Holy Heroes or Human Beings

In this session of the National Jewish Retreat, Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet presents portraits of figures from Jewish history such as Adam, the Patriarchs, and Moses. We will be exploring what made them unique.Were the spiritual super-stars in the Torah stories some rare breed of superhero, or were they natural and yet completely actualized human beings?We will consider the question, ‘What ...

Jewish leaders dismayed by Benedict’s defense of Nazi-era pope

Jewish leaders reacted with dismay on Sunday to comments in Pope Benedict’s new book that his wartime predecessor Pius was a “great, righteous” man who “saved more Jews than anyone else”.Many Jews accuse Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of having turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked quietly behind the scenes because speaking ...

Jewish leaders blast move to extradite Crown Height man charged with hate crime

Jewish leaders are blasting Brooklyn prosecutors who areworking with Israeli officials to extradite a Crown Heights Hasid charged with a hate crime back to New York.Top rabbis, community heads, and Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Borough Park), posted letters on freeyitzi.org supporting Yitzhak Shuchat, 28, – wanted in the April 2008 assault of Andrew Charles the son of a black NYPD cop.“Yitzhak ...

Jewish Leader Reconciles with Lauder

The leader of Austria’s Jewish community said on Friday he had put aside differences with World Jewish Congress head Ron Lauder over Lauder’s alleged interference in the community’s leadership election.Oskar Deutsch, the president of Austria’s official IKG Jewish organization, had last month banned Lauder from IKG property over complaints that he had offered incentives to Deutsch’s rival in an election ...

Jewish leader: Palestinian state declaration not a defeat

Gabriel Zaliasnik, president of the Jewish community in Chile, thinks Israel’s Foreign Ministry is making a big mistake.Having spent the last few weeks battling local pro-Palestinian groups in an effort to influence his government not to recognize Palestinian statehood, Zaliasnik believes the statement that eventually emerged from Santiago last Friday accepting Palestinian independence while acknowledging Israel’s right to security was ...