World News

(JTA) — Running a not-so-Zagat-rated deli, dropping into a Chinese restaurant for Christmas Eve dinner and acting out a bat mitzvah that involves a vampire — for contemporary board game fans, those can be all in an evening’s play. That’s because a crop of new games aims to merge Jewish ideas and experiences with the…

(JTA) — A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces apologized for the death of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, one year after she was killed while on assignment covering clashes in the West Bank city of Jenin. “I think it’s an opportunity for me to say here that we are very sorry of the death…

(JTA) — A Palestinian rocket killed an Israeli in his apartment building and the Palestinian death toll hit 30 as the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza stretched into its fourth day. The number of Palestinian dead from the recent days of fighting, reported early on Friday local time by the Palestinian…

(JTA) — Florida’s state education department rejected two new Holocaust-focused textbooks for classroom use, while forcing at least one other textbook to alter a passage about the Hebrew Bible in order to meet state approval.  The books were rejected as part of a broader review of new K-12 social studies material. According to documents provided…

(JTA) — One of Europe’s most prominent associations of Orthodox rabbis is moving its headquarters from London to Munich in a ripple effect from the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union. “Germany is one of the only countries in Europe where the Jewish community is growing and the political climate is conducive to build…

(JTA) — The attack on the Tops Friendly Market on Buffalo’s Jefferson Avenue last May 14 shook Western New York to the core. In the span of less than 10 minutes, an 18-year-old wielding an AK-47 killed seven and injured three Black people. The victims were teachers, caretakers, activists, new fathers, grandmothers, community leaders and…

(New York Jewish Week) – Back in 1975, Marcia Bricker Halperin had just graduated from Brooklyn College with the dream of becoming a professional photographer when she stepped into the Flatbush outpost of Dubrow’s, a cafeteria-style restaurant, for a warm cup of coffee.  It was there that inspiration hit. “I was wonderstruck,” Halperin writes in…

(JTA) — A historian leafing through files in an archive discovered how a Jewish organization helped bring down an influential far-right extremist movement in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s by going undercover and acting as self-appointed spies.  The discovery of the Anti-Defamation League’s covert operation targeting the John Birch Society is the…

WASHINGTON (JTA) — After being thwarted by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Rashida Tlaib succeeded in spotlighting Palestinian perspectives on Israel’s founding in an event on Capitol Hill — with help from one of Congress’ most powerful Jewish members, Sen. Bernie Sanders. The Palestinian-American Democrat from Detroit also introduced a congressional resolution calling on the…

(JTA) — Jason Schwartzman is starring as a cantor who takes on an adult bat mitzvah student played by veteran actress Carol Kane in an upcoming comedy film. Shooting for “Between the Temples,” a self-described “anxious comedy,” has already wrapped, Variety reported on Wednesday, but no release date was given. The film was written and…