Thursday, April 25th 2024 |
SAN DIEGO (JTA) — The Union for Reform Judaism has sold off half of its headquarters in New York and is investing $1 million from the proceeds to overhaul its youth programming.
The sale of one of the union’s two floors at its midtown Manhattan headquarters closed on Dec. 11. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the movement’s president, announced the sale in his speech the following day at the Reform biennial in...
(JTA) – A populist protest leader’s comments on Jews and banking has drawn condemnation from Jewish and non-Jewish leaders.
Andrea Zunino, spokesman for the Forconi, or Pitchforks Movement, which spearheaded widespread anti-government and anti-austerity protests in Italy last week, made the comment in an interview Friday with the La Repubblica newspaper.
“We want the government to resign,” he told La Repubblica. “We want the sovereignty of Italy, which today is...
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an address to the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial 2013 conference stressed the importance of peaceful solutions to the Iranian nuclear program and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
His speech Sunday, via video feed to the conference’s closing plenary in San Diego, also praised recent efforts to find a compromise solution to interdenominational conflict at the Western Wall.
In large part, the speech repeated...
(JTA) — There are no traces in Iran of Robert Levinson, the retired American-Jewish FBI agent who vanished in the country six years ago, according to Iran’s foreign minister.
Javad Zarif made the assertion Sunday on the CBS news show “Face the Nation” two days after the Washington Post reported that Levinson had been working for the CIA in a rogue operation.
The U.S. government has said publicly that Levinson,...
(JTA) — An American Jewish man who disappeared in Iran in 2007 had been working for the CIA in a rogue operation, an American newspaper reported.
Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent, traveled to the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 to investigate corruption. At the time, he was discussing the renewal of a Central Intelligence Agency contract he had held for several years, according to a report Friday...
Milton H. Cohen, a retired attorney, died on Wednesday, December 11. He was 87.
Cohen was a lifelong resident of New Orleans and graduated from Isidore Newman School in 1943, prior to serving in the U. S. Navy during World War II. Following the war, he returned to New Orleans and using the G. I. Bill, enrolled at Tulane University, eventually graduating from the School of Law.
A member of...
(JNS.org) — Time magazine’s selection of Pope Francis as its “Person of the Year” drew praise from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
The pontiff, whose popularity has soared as a result of his outspoken back-to-basics message for Catholics, beat out other newsmakers such as NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and gay rights activist Edith Windsor.
“Time magazine has made the right choice. Pope...
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Jerusalem and its environs were blanketed with snow, causing the postponement of a scheduled meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
Kerry arrived in Israel on Thursday afternoon, and still plans to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday, citing unnamed American sources. It is his second visit to Israel in two weeks in an...
(JTA) — The Israeli government is shelving a proposal to resettle tens of thousands of Bedouin residents of the Negev that had drawn fierce criticism.
One of the proposal’s main architects, Benny Begin, told reporters on Thursday that the so-called Prawer-Begin Plan would be revised. He said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had approved delaying presentation of the plan to the Knesset.
The plan was billed as an effort to address...
SAN DIEGO (JTA) — The Union for Reform Judaism awarded one of its highest honors to an Orthodox rabbi, the late David Hartman, at the opening plenary of the union’s biennial conference in San Diego.
On Wednesday evening, the union’s president, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, presented the Alexander M. Schindler World Jewry Award posthumously to Hartman’s son, Rabbi Donniel Hartman, president of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and, like his father,...
