World News

(JTA) — Over the course of an illustrious 72-year career as a newspaper reporter, Jerry Izenberg has just about seen it all. The longtime columnist for The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, Izenberg covered the first 53 Super Bowls. He’s been to 58 Kentucky Derbies, not to mention numerous Olympics, World Cups and boxing matches. He…

(JTA) — The question of where countries keep their embassies in Israel has become a debate that perpetually attracts controversy around the globe. In Paraguay, ahead of a national election on Sunday, the question is far from decided. Since former President Donald Trump moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in…

(JTA) — Chrismukkah has come early for Adam Brody fans. Netflix announced on Thursday that the Jewish actor, best known as the geeky heartthrob Seth Cohen on the teen drama “The O.C.” in the mid-2000s, is set to play a “charming rabbi” alongside Kristen Bell in an upcoming  comedy. “In the series, Bell plays an…

(New York Jewish Week) —  The iconic Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse — the Lower East Side eatery famous for chopped liver prepared tableside, carafes of schmaltz on the tables and its shticky, in-house entertainer, Dani Luv — is mounting a comeback. According to Eater New York, the Ashkenazi-influenced restaurant — which shuttered in January 2021 during the…

(JTA) — Rugby’s global governing body has determined that the South African Rugby Union’s decision to disinvite an Israeli team from an international competition last month was not discriminatory. But the CEO of the Israeli team isn’t buying the argument that the cancelation had to do with security threats, as South Africa argued and World…

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The right-wing protest that took some 200,000 people to Jerusalem’s streets on Thursday night to demonstrate in favor of the government’s judicial overhaul felt bizarrely familiar. In many ways, it mimicked the anti-government protests that it meant to oppose: Like the demonstrations that have filled Tel Aviv’s streets every week this year,…

(New York Jewish Week) — It was a mild Friday afternoon in mid-December and Avital Katz and Ilana Sandberg didn’t know what to expect once Shabbat began. The pair had texted, emailed and posted on Instagram to invite as many people as possible to an egalitarian Shabbat service that they were hosting in the living…

KIBBUTZ MAAGAN MICHAEL, Israel (JTA) — About a dozen Jewish leaders from North America and beyond clustered at the edges of a courtyard on this kibbutz by Israel’s northern coastline, standing silent as a two-minute siren rang out in memory of the country’s fallen.  Afterward, young Jews from around the world, some of whom will…

(JTA) – After hate groups in his county on Florida’s East coast projected antisemitic messages onto the Daytona International Speedway, the local sheriff delivered a press conference with one simple message: He’d had enough. “We put up their photos, talked about their arrest records, and let everybody know what a bunch of reprehensible thugs were…

(JTA) — Jerry Springer, the son of Jewish refugees who set aside a promising political career to become the ringleader of a circus-like syndicated talk show featuring feuding couples, angry exes and frequent fisticuffs, died Thursday morning at his home in the Chicago area. A family spokesperson told TMZ that Springer, who was 79, had…