World News
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Bob Born, Jewish maker of Peeps marshmallow candies, dies at 98
(JTA) — Ira “Bob” Born, the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant who founded the company that makes Peeps candies, has died. He was 98. Born was the former president of Just Born Quality Confections, the 100-year-old family-owned candy company in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, that makes Mike and Ikes, jelly beans and Goldenberg Peanut Chews, but…
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Netanyahu ally wants to stop Diaspora donors from funding pluralistic education in Israeli schools
(JTA) — In 2019, Israel’s Noam party drafted an internal report about an alleged plot by foreign forces to take control of the country’s schools in order to teach pluralistic values. At the time the party’s far-right leader, Avi Maoz, was a fringe politician with no authority to carry out the “cleansing” of which he…
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France’s updated plan to counter antisemitism will bring students to sites of attacks
(JTA) — The French government updated its plan for fighting antisemitism and racism, which will require teachers to receive training on the topic and all French schoolchildren to visit the site of an antisemitic or racist incident. Those visits could include Holocaust sites, and roving exhibitions about antisemitism and racism will also be set up…
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British clergyman accused of antisemitism is barred from Church of England through 2030
(JTA) — Stephen Sizer, a retired British vicar who once claimed Jews and Israel were behind 9/11, was banned from the Anglican ministry for 12 years on Monday. Over the course of more than two decades as priest and academic in southern England, Sizer made a name for himself as an outspoken opponent of Christian…
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Everyone knows about Herzl. Is it time for Max Nordau, the intermarried father of Zionism, to get his due?
(JTA) — In the weeks since Israel’s latest government was sworn in, questions relating to assimilation, defining Jewish identity and what it means to be a Zionist have been central to the public and political discourse, which in some ways is perhaps more heated and divisive than it has ever been. One useful addition to…
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Antony Blinken quotes from Jewish prayer during crucial Israel visit
(JTA) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken quoted from a Jewish prayer on arrival in Tel Aviv for a state visit on Monday, days after a deadly terror attack outside a Jerusalem synagogue set off a violent uptick in Israeli-Palestinian violence across the country. Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday and…
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Israeli democracy is ‘robust,’ former PM Naftali Bennett assures New Yorkers
(New York Jewish Week) — Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told an audience here that reports of the deaths of Israeli democracy are exaggerated, and urged American Jews to make their concerns known to the new far-right government rather than walk away. “There are a lot of foolish words flying out in the air,”…
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After I stopped an attack on the subway, the victim and I bonded over Katz’s pastrami sandwiches
(New York Jewish Week) — You definitely don’t want to have what she was having at that moment. It was December, on a Friday. I was in the tunnel that leads to the subway that runs beneath the American Museum of Natural History on West 81st St. Walking just ahead of me were two women,…
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Muslim man postpones Torah burning protest outside of Israeli embassy in Sweden
(JTA) — A Muslim man put off a protest that would have involved burning a Torah scroll in front of Stockholm’s Israeli embassy this past weekend. The man, identified in reports only as a 34-year-old Egyptian writer living in Sweden, had reportedly received approval from Swedish authorities for the protest, which would have come in…
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Germany returns 16th-century sculpture to heirs of Jewish owner
BERLIN (JTA) — A federal German cultural organization has returned a 16th-century sculpture to the heirs of its pre-war Jewish owner who faced Nazi persecution. The Berlin-based Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, or SPK (for Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz), announced today that the “Maria Lactans” statuette depicting Mary nursing an infant Jesus would be given back to…
