World News

(JTA) — Police in San Francisco have arrested a man they believe is responsible for shooting blanks during a study session inside a Jewish center there. The San Francisco Police Department announced an arrest early Saturday in the incident, which took place on Wednesday but was not reported to authorities until the following day. They…

(JTA) — The Brooklyn Nets traded Kyrie Irving to the Dallas Mavericks, a team whose Jewish owner had spoken up about the star guard’s antisemitism controversy last year. Mark Cuban, known as one of the NBA’s most outspoken team owners and as a star of the hit TV show “Shark Tank,” did not comment on…

(JTA) — Years ago, when I worked at the Forward, I had a cameo in a real-life Yiddish drama. A cub reporter named Max Gross sat just outside my office, where he answered the phones. A frequent caller was Inna Grade, the widow of the Yiddish writer Chaim Grade and a fierce guardian of his literary legacy.…

(JTA) — French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if the Israeli government’s proposals to decrease the power of the Supreme Court become law, Paris will no longer consider Israel a “common democracy.” Macron and Netanyahu, on his first trip to Europe since returning to power as prime minister, outwardly…

(JTA) — Germany held a ceremony to celebrate the first German-Jewish sites to be given UNESCO’s World Heritage designation on Wednesday. The sites in the upper part of the Rhine River valley are known as the origin point of Ashkenazi culture and where the Yiddish language first began to develop over 1,000 years ago. They…

(JTA) — “Hi, my name is Dan. I’m 11 years old and I like doing magic and circus skills, especially unicycling. I’m here today to testify against House Bill 170, 183, and 337,” a young voice said into the microphone. “I really like to play sports with my friends, although honestly I’m not very good…

(JTA) — Years ago, the Israeli filmmaker Orit Fouks Rotem took a class led by director Eran Kolirin, best known as the maker of “The Band’s Visit.” This month, movies by both filmmakers are getting theatrical rollouts in the United States. On a recent Zoom call, Palestinian author Sayed Kashua joked: “Was that his class…

(New York Jewish Week) –  “West Wing” star Joshua Malina will join the cast of Broadway’s “Leopoldstadt” starting March 14, replacing David Krumholtz in the central role of wealthy businessman and family patriarch Hermann Merz in the Holocaust drama. “I know the day that I was introduced to Tom Stoppard’s work: January 5th, 1984, when…

(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — A man fired blanks from a handgun at a Jewish center in San Francisco Wednesday, shocking a group gathered for a study session in a community space serving mainly Russian-speaking Jews. But no one present called police, so it was not until word of the…

(JTA) — As much of the financial world increasingly eyes political developments in Israel with concern, a company that specializes in assessing investments based on social responsibility criteria made a special announcement Wednesday in which it declared Israel “a low-risk country.”  That designation is both a signal to investors that they are unlikely to get entangled…