World News

(New York Jewish Week) — The sixth annual New York Ladino Day — which aims to celebrate and elevate Ladino culture in New York and throughout the world — will take place this Sunday at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. For the first time since the pandemic, the program will be conducted in…

When Jon Cohen was in college a decade ago studying biology and chemistry with plans for medical school, he knew he wanted to make a difference in the world beyond the Florida State University campus in Tallahassee. So he and some friends decided to launch a community project teaching science to children from low-income households…

(JTA) — In a speech to the European Union parliament tied to commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that criticism of his country, which has drawn renewed international scrutiny over its new right-wing government, is legitimate. Questioning Israel’s right to exist, he added, is “antisemitism in the full sense of the…

BERLIN (JTA) – The embattled Rabbi Walter Homolka, accused of abuse of power at the liberal rabbinical seminary he founded, has suffered yet another consequence: expulsion from Germany’s liberal rabbinical association. The expulsion does not affect any work that Homolka might do as a rabbi or professor in Germany or beyond. But it strips him…

(JTA) — The Israeli founder of an international payroll company that provides services to Toyota and Microsoft has announced that she will move her company’s money out of Israel over concerns about its new right-wing government. Eynat Guez, a co-founder and CEO of Papaya Global, which was valued at $3.7 billion in 2021, made the…

(JTA) — At least nine Palestinians were killed in Jenin during the first major Israel raid on the city since Israel’s new right-wing government took office last month. Israeli authorities say they killed six militants in the raid on what they said was a safe house. They said the raid was aimed at heading off…

(JTA) — Doug Emhoff’s itinerary on an upcoming trip to Poland and Germany includes a stop at the factory where Oskar Schindler saved over 1,000 Jews, a Shabbat dinner with local Jewish leaders and a visit to a United Nations center housing refugees from Ukraine. Senior administration officials outlined the trip’s details in a call…

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, is the latest Jewish pro-Israel stalwart to express alarm at proposals advanced by the new Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Nadler, the longest-serving Jewish lawmaker in Congress, singled out proposed judicial reforms for criticism, particularly one that would allow the Knesset to…

(New York Jewish Week) — When Andrew Mandel dreamt up a new Jewish ritual object known as a “tzedek box,” he was admittedly most interested in the “tzedek” — the social justice — aspect, and less so the “box” part. Mandel, a fifth-year rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College in New York, envisioned a new Jewish holiday,…

WASHINGTON (JTA) — A Jewish nominee withdrew her bid for a top State Department human rights post after a key Republican senator refused to change his mind about what he said were her unacceptable past comments on Israel. “At present, I don’t see a path forward for confirmation, and after one and a half years,…