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A Seattle court declared Naveed Haq guilty Tuesday for the 2006 shooting spree at a Seattle Jewish center. He as sentenced to life in prison on the eight counts of murder and harassment he was convicted on. Haq killed one person and injured five, one critically, in the shooting spree at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle in July 2006.

ROME (Reuters) - A nativity scene featuring a dark-skinned Jesus, Mary and Joseph that has gone on display in a Verona courthouse has created heated debate in a city with strong links to Italy's anti-immigration Northern League party. The nativity's appearance coincides with the League's controversial operation "White Christmas," a two-month sweep ending on Christmas Day to ferret out foreigners without proper permits in Coccaglio, a small League-led town east of Milan. The Christmas scene -- featuring a dark-skinned baby Jesus dressed in a red shirt and lying in a manger -- was the idea of Mario Giulio Schinaia, the...

NORFOLKCommodore Uriah P. Levy He left home when he was 10, running away to become a cabin boy, and eventually became the first Jewish commodore in the Navy, the highest rank available at the time. On Sunday, the Jewish chapel at Naval Station Norfolk – the oldest land-based Jewish chapel in the Navy – was rededicated to Commodore Uriah P. Levy, 50 years to the day after it was first named after him. Born in Philadelphia in 1792, Levy had a career that spanned pirate-chasing to authorship – he wrote “A Manual of Internal Rules and Regulations for Men-of-War.” It...

Dr. Richard Antoun of Binghamton University, a retired professor of anthropology with a specialty in comparative religions allegedly was stabbed four times in the chest by a Saudi national, Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani, a cultural-anthropology grad student. Professor Antoun was a peace activist, and a convert to Judaism, and was known on campus as "a really nice guy."

According to a Quinnipiac poll released today (1), Jewish support for President Obama has tumbled to 52%. In January, Obama’s approval rating among Jews was 83%; by September it had fallen to 64%, according to a Gallup poll (2). The Quinnipiac poll asked respondents whether they approved of President Obama’s handling of specific issues. Only 52% of Jewish respondents approved of the way President Obama is handling the economy, and 49% approved of his handling of health care. Among Jewish respondents, only 36% were satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. today.

Golda Meir proposed halting aliyah of disabled Polish Jews By Lily Galili, Haaretz Correspondent Last Update: 09/12/2009 09:56 In 1958, then-foreign minister Golda Meir raised the possibility of preventing handicapped and sick Polish Jews from immigrating to Israel, a recently discovered Foreign Ministry document has revealed. "A proposal was raised in the coordination committee to inform the Polish government that we want to institute selection in aliyah, because we cannot continue accepting sick and handicapped people. Please give your opinion as to whether this can be explained to the Poles without hurting immigration," read the document, written by Meir to...

Chelsea Clinton is Methodist. Her new fiancé is Jewish. From Ivanka Trump to Ed Koch, Jewish Americans talk to The Daily Beast’s Samuel P. Jacobs about the question every mother-in-law wants answered. “The great thing about America is everyone wants to marry a Jewish boy.” —Harvard professor of Yiddish literature Ruth Wisse All summer long, Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky were dogged by rumors of an engagement. A Martha’s Vineyard wedding was in the works—and then it wasn’t. Over Thanksgiving, the couple at last made it official. So now that the former first daughter has finally announced her plans to...

Growing up in Kuwait, I had the best of everything. My father owned a successful construction company, and provided us five children with amenities like piano lessons, swimming, calligraphy and trips all over the world. Although we were Muslims like everyone else, we were totally secular and my father always aimed to shield us from religious people whom he described as crazies. I grew up being told that Israelis and Jews were the lowest type of creature in existence, put on Earth only to kill us Arabs. In math class the teacher would say, “If one rocket killed X number...

EasyJet recalls magazine with Holocaust memorial fashion shoot Published: 24 Nov 09 10:14 CETOnline: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20091124-23481.html British discount airline easyJet has recalled some 280,000 copies of its in-flight magazine after complaints about a fashion shoot staged at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial, daily Financial Times Deutschland reported on Tuesday. ADVERTISING Heavy wind storms rage through Germany - National (24 Nov 09)Berlin plans 'integration contract' for immigrants - Politics (23 Nov 09)Antique car dealer finds Hitler's Mercedes - Society (23 Nov 09) The November edition of “easyJet Traveller,” which features a fashion section with fashion models in provocative poses amid the pillars of the...

At first glance, Moshe Holtzberg looks like any happy boy on the brink of his third birthday. Messy lunches and tons of playtime is how the lovable tot spends his time with his grandparents and nanny living in Afula, Israel. But Moshe is far from normal. He is a living miracle. Last year, a group of gunmen stormed into Moshe's old house in Mumbai, India, killing his parents and four others at the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish center. His nanny, Sandra Samuel, managed to grab him half way into the 36-hour siege, running from the chaos and saving his life. "He remembers...

Faith leaders on Tuesday gathered at a Jewish religious and cultural centre in Mumbai to light candles to those who died in last year's deadly terror attacks on the city. The candles were lit after a moment of silence to remember the six people who were killed at Chabad House on November 26-29, including the respected rabbi who ran it, Gavriel Holtzberg, and his pregnant wife, Rivka. The ceremony, on the ground floor of the bullet-scarred five-storey building in bustling Colaba Market, followed a multi-faith religious ceremony at the luxury Trident hotel, which was also stormed by gunmen. Overall, 166...

A British appeals court has ruled that a Jewish school unlawfully discriminated against an applicant who was not a Jew according to the British chief rabbi’s definition of Judaism. The applicant is the son of a Jewish father and a mother who converted at a Reformed synagogue; according to Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a child of a mother who converted to Judaism is Jewish only if the mother converted at an Orthodox synagogue. Whether this definition of Judaism is “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist … the requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must...

Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matthew Brooks commented today on a post-election poll done by McLaughlin & Associates in New Jersey on November 3 and 4, 2009: "Recently released post-election poll results from New Jersey show that Republican Chris Christie won 38% of the Jewish vote this year in his run for governor. We are pleased by Christie's strong showing in the Jewish community in a very close race. [Click here to download a memo of the poll results.] "The Jewish community was a key battleground in this election, with both Republicans and the Democrats actively campaigning for Jewish support....

JERUSALEM – Israel displayed for the first time Wednesday a collection of rare coins charred and burned from the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple nearly 2,000 years ago. About 70 coins were found in an excavation at the foot of a key Jerusalem holy site. They give a rare glimpse into the period of the Jewish revolt that eventually led to the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in A.D. 70, said Hava Katz, curator of the exhibition. The Jews rebelled against the Roman Empire and took over Jerusalem in A.D. 66. After laying siege to Jerusalem, the Romans...

Swasticas, messages of hate found on wall of playgroundIt was an appalling sight at a Broward Jewish community center this morning when swastikas and anti-semitic messages were found painted on the walls of a playground. A half-dozen messages of hate were found graffitied at the Samuel and Helen Soref Jewish Community Center on the 5600 block of Coral Ridge Dr. in Coral Springs. Swasticas, Nazi "SS" lightning bolt insignias and messages like "Jews Shall Die" were painted in gold just feet from swing sets, monkey bars and slides where children play at the center. "Your Worst Nightmare" another message read....

David Miliband accused by Jewish leaders of using anti-semitism" as "political football" David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has been accused by leaders of the British Jewish community of using anti-semitism as a “political football”. By Andrew Pierce Published: 7:00AM GMT 09 Nov 2009 Mr Miliband has made a series of attacks on Michael Kaminski who leads the antifederalist Law and Justice group in the European Parliament which David Cameron’s Conservatives have forged a new alliance with. In his speech at the Labour Party conference the Foreign Secretary said Mr Kaminski’s “anti-semitic, Neo-Nazi” past made him “feel sick”. He quoted Poland’s...

Muslim converts?

On Sunday evening at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C., J-Street opened its first ever-national policy conference. Officially founded over a year ago, the self-proclaimed "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobby was birthed amid controversy. While J-Street positioned itself as the voice of mainstream American Jewish opinion on Israel, critics (myself included) argued it was a left-wing front far from the mainstream.

The Anti-Defamation League is up in arms over two South Carolina Republicans’ revival of an old stereotype. Peter Beinart asks: Is calling Jews thrifty really so offensive? This week, in an act of vicious anti-Semitism, Edwin O. Merwin Jr. and James S. Ulmer, chairmen of the Bamberg County and Orangeburg County, South Carolina, Republican parties, respectively, co-authored an op-ed in which they accused Jews of taking good care of their money. “Jews who are wealthy,” they wrote, “got that way not by watching dollars but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves.” Then...

Jewish Speed Dating Queen Expands London, New York, Paris, Israel Events By Gayla Goodman Israel News Agency Tel Aviv, Israel ---- October 17, 2009 ..... Speed dating, a highly popular, formalized dating system whose purpose is to encourage people to meet a large number of new people traces its origins to Rabbi Yaacov Deyo of Aish HaTorah. The Rabbi has said it was originally created as a way to help Jewish singles meet and marry. Today, Michal Matityahu, a native of Tel Aviv is ensuring that Rabbi Deyo work is carried on and expanded. "I saw a need to bring...

Tynan: "I was too stupid with my mouth"Irish tenor Ronan Tynan is belting out red-faced apologies today for alleged anti-Semitic remarks he made to a Jewish doctor looking at an apartment in his East Side building -- comments, he said, that were merely a joke. Famous for singing "God Bless America" at Yankee stadium, "Ave Maria" at the funeral of Ronald Reagan and songs for Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Tynan is now striking a chord of penitence and reconciliation. "It was stupid of me to be so callous, and I would never want to hurt anybody's feelings," Tynan told NBC New...

The other day, deep in Rego Park, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens, Stanley Moscowitz and Walter Israel sat down at a Formica table for lunch at Ben's Best Kosher Deli on Queens Boulevard. Moscowitz, who's 53 and grew up in nearby Forest Hills, ordered first: matzo ball, tip of the tongue, roast beef, rye, Russian, onions and Dr. Brown's diet cherry drink. Israel ordered pastrami on rye bread. His son Jason ordered pastrami on white. In his defense, Jason did not ask for mayonnaise, but the combination of pastrami and white bread enjoys a certain...

Sixty-four percent of American Jews approve of the job President Obama is doing, significantly higher than both the national average and the ratings the president received from the other religious groups surveyed, according to a new Gallup poll. President Barack Obama Gallup also found that while Obama’s job approval rating among Jews is down from 83 percent at the beginning of the year, he experienced the same percent drop among the general population. According to an analysis from the polling company, the equal rates of decline indicate that Obama’s policies on Israel and the Middle East have not had a...

We'll have what he's having If the idea of a heaping pile of thick, warm pastrami on rye gets you as hot and bothered as the female protagonist of When Harry Met Sally, you may have a problem. Then again, you may just really love smoked meat, like author David Sax. His forthcoming book, SAVE THE DELI: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen, calls for a party of the carnivorous sort. At Deli-licious: A Celebration of the Jewish Deli in New York, garlic-breathed Heebs like Jelvis the Jewish Elvis and Borscht Belt comic...

I’ve seen the future, and it’s black and white. It was a sunny Sunday morning in our Lower East Side community playground, animated by a frenetic blur of whooping kids, my own included. Alone on a bench, I’d neglected to bring a book from home and wasn’t in the mood to socialize with the parents nearby. I opted instead to subject the ad-hoc collection of children to an informal Jewish identity census. Before disclosing the outcome of this thoroughly unscientific survey, it’s important to recall that this neighborhood was once the beating heart of Jewish life in America and the...

HOBBY’S DELICATESSEN & RESTAURANT in downtown Newark may have lost much of its more traditional clientele over the years, but it has held on to tradition. The corned beef and the tongue are cured for 14 days in stainless steel bins in the basement. The salamis hanging on the wall look as if they’ve been drying there, their flavor intensifying, since the Brummer family bought the place in 1962. Samuel Brummer and his sons, Michael and Marc, even make their own matzo ball soup and potato pancakes. But in Newark, as in so many cities, holding on has been tough...

The Anti-Defamation League has raised the alarm over the use of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric by supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya: "From President Zelaya himself down to media pundits and political activists, there has been a troubling undercurrent of anti-Semitism in the situation in Honduras," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "We know from history that at times of turmoil and unrest, Jews are a convenient scapegoat, and that is happening now in Honduras, a country that has only a small Jewish minority." These statements include Zelaya's unsubstantiated claim that Israeli mercenaries were attacking the Brazilian embassy...

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots. A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver. Related Articles Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Jews in Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: in the words of the Holocaust denier Let's see how Iran's president likes being called 'the Jew Ahmadinejad' Funny, you don't look Jewish? The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth. The Sabourjians...

B>Temple Bet Shira builds the first drive-through Sukkah in Miami/> If popular corners in Miami have drive-through Starbucks, then why can’t popular synagogues have drive-through sukkahs? That’s what one temple in Pinecrest is promoting for the first time this fall during the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot. So, if you can only spare a minute for your prayers, why not make a quick stop at Temple Bet Shira’s drive-through sukkah. According to the Miami Herald, Jews can visit the sukkah starting Friday at sundown at the onset of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The "McSukkah" will be up for a...

"Put not your trust in princes," says Psalm 146, but both liberal Jews and Christians put all their trust in a Prince from Chicagoland in the last election. A prince of a guy who now feels he is empowered to carry out a Revolution from Above (Jozef Stalin's phrase). You can trust this guy. I mean, a black guy with a Harvard Law degree? And he wrote both of his autobiographies like an angel? Women all over the land had Momasms when Obama appeared on TV. Distrust of princes and kings pervades the Hebrew Bible, and to a lesser extent...

Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has exasperated the world with incensed condemnations of Israel and his insistence that the Holocaust is a hoax, but could there be another reason behind his seeming hatred for the Jews? According to a London Telegraph report, his ferocity may be overcompensation … for his own Jewish roots. Examining a photo of the Iranian president holding aloft his identity card during the nation's 2008 elections, the newspaper discovered Ahmadinejad's original family name – prior to their conversion to Islam – was Sabourjian, a Jewish name meaning "cloth weaver." Ahmadinejad has not denied that his name was...

The president's approval rating has fallen to an astonishingly low 4 percent in the Holy Land. As his envoy jumpstarts peace talks, Richard Wolffe reports on Obama's plans to win the ally back. Is Obama surrounded by self-hating Jews? That was one of the most ridiculous—and yet perversely telling—stories to emerge from the last several weeks of Israeli media coverage. Not because the president is surrounded by Jewish aides who want to sabotage their own identity. Far from it. David Axelrod openly reveres the old Jewish deli in Chicago known as Manny’s. He has a sign in his West Wing...

There are so many depressing news lately, every once in a while we have to laugh or we’ll go meshugue! I came across an interesting new blog of mostly Jewish video content. It does have some funny videos, some serious also! Bits that everyone can appreciate and… no, you don’t have to be Jewish even. Don’t listen to the news, don’t read the paper unless you have some aspirins handy and a psychiatrist is in the same room with you. (I can recommend my friend Morrisd, tell him I sent you and he’ll give you a nice discount!) Meanwhile, laugh...

The Anti-Defamation League, the country's leading group dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, is rightly sensitive to the offense of trivializing the Holocaust. Why, then, has the ADL said nothing in protest against the Darwinian biologist and bestselling atheist author Richard Dawkins and his comparison of Darwin doubters to Holocaust deniers?...

Via Facebook: Todd and I would like to offer our best wishes to the Jewish community as they celebrate the High Holy Days. With the celebration of the Jewish New Year this week and the observance of the Day of Atonement next week, we are reminded of the hopeful commitment to renewal and peace exemplified by the Jewish tradition and the Jewish people throughout history. Yom Kippur, the most solemn and important of the Jewish holy days, is a time of reflection and supplication for forgiveness. The timeless human struggle to promote justice, harmony, and peace is seen here in...

JERUSALEM – President Obama is "fed up" with Israel while his administration has given the Palestinians guarantees they will eventually take over Jewish homes and buildings throughout most of the West Bank, a top Palestinian Authority official claimed to WND. "We heard from the U.S. that no matter what Israel is building in the West Bank, it will not affect a final status agreement to create a Palestinian state," said the PA official, who spoke on condition his name be withheld. "The Americans told us (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu might construct in the West Bank for now but we (Palestinians)...

Eight years ago, Yacov Margolese was driving his car, his then 2-year-old daughter Serena in the back seat. He was working that day as a massage therapist in a day spa in Potomac, Md. It was in the car that he heard the news come over the radio, the act of terror that would change the world. In this personal story, it would absolutely change Yacov Margolese’s life. Two years after Sept. 11, 2001, Army Spec. Yacov Margolese took cover in an outpost outside of Baghdad, Iraq, when an enemy missile, possibly a Scud, eerily whistled overhead, its deadly payload...

When my husband Irving was a young man he would go door-to-door around Milwaukee with a Jewish National Fund blue box collecting money to redeem property in the Land of Israel. Although it was during the Depression, everyone put in what they could afford: pennies, nickels and dimes. In the 19th century, wealthy Jews like Rothschild were purchasing large tracts of land for Jews to settle in the Holy Land. The synagogue Ohel Yitzhak in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, abandoned in 1938 after waves of Arab violence - which we recently rebuilt - was originally built and...

These days it seems like non-Jews all over the place are trying to take a piece of Jewish learning or history and make it their own. The problem is that in many cases they are copying Jews who just don’t understand the Torah foundation supporting the traditions. See the “Faux Mitzvah” — a party for 13-year-old Gentile children that skips the religious ceremony part. In some cases the non-Jews are being duped, as with Hollywood’s Kabbalah fad which turns sacred texts into little more than red string bracelets and “holy water.” There are those of the Jewish faith who will...

‘Katyn was not like the Holocaust’ 02.09.2009 11:48 A German Jewish group has said that President Kaczynski’s likening the 1940 Katyn massacre to the Holocaust was “inappropriate”. “Despite total understanding of the pain caused by the memory of Polish officers murdered in Katyn, the comparison is inappropriate and out of place,” said Secretary General of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Stephan Kramer, quoted in the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper. President Kaczynski referred to the massacre of over 22,000 Polish officers by the Soviet NKVD in 1940 in his speech commemorating the outbreak of WW II. “Though not comparable in...

Hitler's symbol of obliteration has become a beacon of hope A Torah once belonging to Adolf Hitler has survived 130 years and some of the worst times in Jewish history. Now all it had to do was make it one mile without being dropped. Piece of cake. The Torah will now be housed at Congregation Ahavat Olam, which received the holy scroll on Friday. It was a four year journey for the sacred artifact from a London repository, but the last leg pales in comparison to what it originally was destined for. Hitler confiscated the Torah and kept it...

Think you've got pressure at work? Consider Rabbi Avraham Bloomenstiel's day. His project will take about 18 months to finish, is guided by more than 4,000 Jewish laws and requires absolute precision. One mistake — or even a badly misshapen letter — and the offending page may have to be buried in a cemetery, according to Jewish law. "Unless the text is 100 percent accurate, there is no point in doing what we're doing," said Bloomenstiel, who was admitted to Harvard University at age 16 to study chemistry and later received a master's degree in music from the Peabody Institute...

Major American Jewish groups say their relationship with Roman Catholic leaders is at risk because of a recent statement by U.S. bishops' on salvation and evangelizing. Jewish leaders say that they interpret the bishops' new document as a plan to evangelize Jews during interfaith dialogue. Jews say they can't participate in a dialogue under those conditions. The bishops had issued the declaration in June. They said that the church doesn't evangelize Jews but will invite them to the faith when it's appropriate. The Jewish protest was made Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and rabbis

Public health officials are considering promoting routine circumcision for all baby boys born in the United States to reduce the spread of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. The topic is a delicate one that has already generated controversy, even though a formal draft of the proposed recommendations, due out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by the end of the year, has yet to be released. Experts are also considering whether the surgery should be offered to adult heterosexual men whose sexual practices put them at high risk of infection. But they acknowledge that a circumcision drive...

(IsraelNN.com) Many American Jewish organizations have publicly offered words of support for U.S. President Barack Obama's He told the religious leaders, "I need you to spread the facts and speak the truth." healthcare nationalization plans. However, some expressed serious reservations over certain aspects of the likely reforms. On Wednesday, Obama devoted a single conference call to non-Orthodox Jewish religious leaders before addressing over 140,000 other American religious leaders to promote his ideas on healthcare. In his first conference call of the day, President Obama spoke with over 1,000 rabbis and lay leaders from the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements

There's Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve (in better days) and rude waiters, lovely Paris in the spring and stifling and deserted Paris in August, brave fighting comrades in 1917 and waving the white flag in World War II. And then there is the relationship between the French and their Jewish countrymen. France's cyclical anti- and philo-Semitism is the theme of "Being Jewish in France" (Comme un Juif en France), Yves Jeuland's densely detailed documentary film, a three-hour long overview of what one Jewish jurist describes as "a love affair gone sour."

Early in the spring of 1944, when I was quite a bit younger than I am now, I parachuted into Nazi-occupied Poland as the leader of a team of Brooklyn-born commandos. We landed in a field not far from the train tracks that fed Jews to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. My team laid explosive charges on the tracks, destroying them utterly, and then I moved quickly on foot to the death camp itself, where I found Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, in bed. I shot him in the face, though not before lecturing him on his sins. Before...

The Fatah party, which leads the Palestinian Authority, will meet in Bethlehem this week and call for “controlled violence” against Israel, the Saudi Arabian newspaper Al Watan reported. The French news agency AFP also confirmed an Al Watan statement that Fatah will reject the idea that Israel is a Jewish state. The proposed Fatah platform in effect puts on ice any chance for negotiations over the establishment of a PA state. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said that talks with the PA must be predicated on its acceptance of Israel as the home of the Jewish people, which would provide...

JERUSALEM – Marking the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, about a thousand Jewish protesters today read the biblical book of Lamentations in front of the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem to protest against the Obama administration's demand to freeze Jewish construction in eastern sections of the city. Tonight marks the fasting day of Tisha B'Av, or the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av. It commemorates a series of tragedies that befell the Jewish people all on the same day, most significantly the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, which occurred about 656 years apart on...

Levy Izhak Rosenbaum claimed to be in the business of buying and selling real estate, but he really bought and sold human kidneys for transplant, according to a federal complaint filed Thursday. The 58-year-old Brooklyn man was accused of trafficking in human organs, after a sting by an undercover FBI agent who agreed to pay $160,000 for a kidney from a live Israeli donor for her sick New Jersey "uncle." Investigators said Rosenbaum bragged about doing "quite a lot" of transplants over the last 10 years. "I am what you call a matchmaker," the complaint said the man, also known...