April 21, 2015
BOSTON (JTA) — Historian David Kertzer won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography detailing how Benito Mussolini’s secret relationship with Pope Pius XI influenced the Italian dictator’s persecution of his country’s Jews.
Kertzer, a professor of anthropology and Italian studies at Brown University, was recognized in the biography-autobiography category for “The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe.”
Also recognized, for...
April 21, 2015
By PAUL MILLER
(JNS.org) — Two months after the student government at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) raised concerns over the Jewish background of Rachel Beyda, a candidate for the student judicial board, an eerily similar incident has emerged at Stanford University.
The Stanford Review reported that student senate candidate Molly Horwitz’s Jewish background was called into question by the Students of Color Coalition (SOCC) during an endorsement session...
April 19, 2015
By URIEL HEILMAN
NEW YORK (JTA) — It promises a revolutionary innovation that could transform Jewish Sabbath observance.
By changing the way a light switch works, the patented Kosher Switch offers a novel — and, its backers say, kosher — way to turn light switches (and, perhaps, other electrical appliances) on and off during Shabbat, circumventing one of the Sabbath’s central restrictions: the use of electricity.
In just three days, the product’s backers...
April 16, 2015
(JTA) — President Barack Obama condemned anti-Semitism in a Holocaust Remembrance Day message.
“It is incumbent upon us to make real those timeless words ‘Never forget. Never again,'” Obama said in the statement released Thursday morning. “Yet even as we recognize that mankind is capable of unspeakable acts of evil, we also draw strength from the survivors, the liberators and the righteous among nations who represented humanity at its best.
...
April 16, 2015
(JTA) — The University of California, Santa Barbara, student senate narrowly voted down an Israel divestment resolution.
Following an eight-hour debate, the resolution was defeated early Thursday morning in a vote of 13 against and 12 in favor, with one abstention. The Associated Students Senate president cast the deciding vote against the resolution.
The resolution, written by Students for Justice in Palestine, called on the university to divest from companies...
April 16, 2015
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The United States would continue to “work closely” with Israel at the United Nations but would not count out advancing resolutions targeting Israel, the U.S. ambassador to the world body said.
Samantha Power testified Wednesday before the foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Rep. Nita Lowey, D-NY., the top Democrat on the committee and the subcommittee, told Power that she...
April 16, 2015
(JTA) — The director of UCLA’s Jewish studies center canceled a lecture at the University of Illinois over its withdrawal of a job offer to Steven Salaita, a harsh critic of Israel.
Todd Samuel Presner sent a letter in late March to Phyllis Wise, chancellor at the Urbana-Champaign school, informing her that he will not come to the campus for its Rosenthal Lecture because of how her office and the...
April 15, 2015
By RON KAMPEAS
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Hillary Clinton does not appear until 90 seconds into the two-minute video rolling out her campaign. No one among the bright and diverse array of everyday Americans in that video mentions foreign policy. Or Barack Obama.
Jewish Democrats say the video released this weekend is emblematic of the approach that Clinton is likely to take as she tries to straddle her loyalty to Obama with...
April 14, 2015
(JTA) — Job approval ratings for President Obama have dropped among American Jews from 61 percent to 50 percent since the start of 2015, a new Gallup poll found.
The American Jews interviewed for the poll released this week gave Obama a 50 percent approval rating in March, dropping from 52 percent in February and 61 percent in January.
The poll results were based on interviews with 1,022 Americans who...
April 14, 2015
(JTA) — Swastikas and anti-Semitic epithets were written in a stairwell of a dormitory at the University of Missouri in Columbia.
The two incidents occurred on the morning of April 9 and the evening of April 10. No suspects have been identified.
The writing was done in ash, such as from the end of a cigarette or a cigar, the Columbia Daily Tribune reported. The vandalism has been removed.
Neither...
