January 04, 2022
By JORDYN HAIME
(JTA) — Israel has pledged to keep the Biden administration in the loop on major deals with China and would reconsider those deals if the United States raises opposition, Haaretz reported on Monday.
Both the Biden administration and the Trump administration have raised concerns about growing ties between Israel and China as the latter’s relationships with the United States and European countries have soured.
U.S. National Security...
January 04, 2022
(JTA) — A judge sentenced the rabbi who lost a finger in the 2019 antisemitic shooting attack in Poway, California, to 14 months in prison for his role in a fraud scheme.
The sentencing Tuesday was unusual because the prosecution and the defense agreed that Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein should receive only home confinement.
“You not only committed this offense yourself but you took a lot of people with you,” US...
January 04, 2022
By RON KAMPEAS
(JTA) — The founder and chairman of a major property management software firm told a coterie of associates, including the governor of Utah, that COVID was a deadly Jewish plot.
“I believe there is a sadistic effort underway to euthanize the American people,” David Bateman, the founder of Entrata, said in the email, first reported Tuesday by Fox 13, a Salt Lake City TV station. The email,...
January 03, 2022
By SHIRA HANAU
(JTA) — Israel announced Monday that it would reduce its restrictions on travel that were first put in place in November to delay the spread of the Omicron variant, but visitors from the United States are still barred from entering.
Starting Jan. 9, many fully vaccinated foreign travelers will be allowed enter the country again. But visitors from a number of countries deemed “red” due to high...
December 29, 2021
(JTA) — The California man who killed a woman and wounded three others when he opened fire at a Poway synagogue in 2019 was sentenced to a second life sentence in federal court Tuesday. John Earnest, who was 19 when he carried out the shooting, had already been sentenced to one life sentence in California state court earlier this year.
While the second life sentence does not actually change the...
December 27, 2021
By ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — The New York City-based Jewish Queer Youth organization received a $1 million donation to expand its social services to Orthodox LGBTQ youth nationwide.
The gift comes from Toronto-based real estate developer Paul Austin, CEO of the Salpam Group, and his partner, Dalip Girdhar, who works in information technology at TD Bank.
Theirs is JQY’s biggest donation since it launched as...
December 23, 2021
By BEN HARRIS
(JTA) — The left-wing magazine Jewish Currents has apologized for running an advertisement this week for the Dorot Fellowship, a ten-month leadership training program in Israel for American Jews.
In an apology to readers issued on Thursday, the magazine said the ad was accepted “without proper vetting” and that it would return the money it had been paid to run it.
“This ad is not in line...
December 23, 2021
By ASAF SHALEV
(JTA) — Sometime while Rabbi Michael Cook was teaching Reform rabbinical students in 2000, two rabbis who had studied under him lodged formal complaints with their shared professional association alleging that he had been abusive.
But before the rabbinic association, the Central Conference of American Rabbis or CCAR, took any action, Cook resigned. The move cut him off from the Reform movement’s job hiring process — but...
December 23, 2021
By SHIRA HANAU
(JTA) — Illinois’ state pension will divest from Unilever, the parent company of Ben and Jerry’s, over the ice cream company’s decision this summer to stop selling ice cream in the West Bank as a protest of Israel’s occupation of the area.
The Illinois Investment Policy Board voted 7-0 to add Uniliver to its “prohibited entity list.” It was not yet clear when state agencies would have...
December 19, 2021
By SHIRA HANAU
(JTA) — Israel’s Health Ministry has recommended barring Israelis from traveling to the United States due to the outbreak of the Omicron coronavirus variant there.
Over a dozen staff members of the Israeli Consulate in New York have tested positive, according to The Times of Israel. That number includes Asaf Zamir, Israel’s consul general in New York, who had recently attended the Israeli-American Council’s annual conference in...
