Free Republic

Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders has tapped several critics of Israel to advise him on foreign policy, including one who has compared Israelis to “Nazis” and accused them of waging “a Holocaust.” Sanders, who is Jewish and had family members slaughtered during the Holocaust, recently disclosed that his top foreign policy advisers include J Street, a dovish Middle East advocacy group that backs some of Congress’ most vocal critics of Israel, former assistant Secretary of Defense Larry Korb, and James Zogby, an Israel detractor who heads the Arab American Institute. The inclusion of these advisers in the Sanders’ campaign, which...

NGO Monitor's Professor Gerald Steinberg blasts America's liberal Jewish 'leadership' in this week's Jewish Week. In blaming Israeli policy for the fact that on many U.S. campuses, the classmates of Jewish students “shun them for identifying with Israel at all,” perhaps American Jewish leaders are overlooking the failures at home, particularly among liberal progressive diaspora Jewish leaders. Many Jewish students are stuck entirely in an American bubble, with no understanding of the centrality of Jewish self-determination (i.e., Zionism) to our survival as a people. So how can they even begin to understand Israel, let alone give us advice? For...

One of the three winners of the record-breaking Powerball lottery jackpot in the United States became wealthy overnight thanks to the generosity of her boss, one of the American Jewish community’s leading philanthropists. Shlomo Rechnitz, a health care magnate who owns 80 assisted living facilities throughout California, purchased nearly 18,000 lottery tickets for all of his employees, one of which happened to contain the winning numbers. The unprecedented $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot will be divided among three winning tickets purchased in Tennessee, California and Florida. Each ticket is worth $528.8 million, lottery officials said in California, one of 44 states...

Alain Ghozland, 73, a French Jewish politician from outside of Paris, was found dead in his apartment on Tuesday, with his body showing multiple lacerations that appeared to be stab wounds, according to reports. Mr. Ghozland was a municipal councillor in Creteil, and initial reports suspect he was murdered, but police have no leads regarding his assailant, L’Express reports. Though an official autopsy has not been concluded, early reports state his apartment was ransacked and his body was covered with stab wounds. There are also reports that his car is missing. Le Figaro, speaking with police, reported there were signs...

A Turkish teen who was arrested for stabbing his Jewish teacher in Marseille, France, on Monday stated that he was acting on behalf of Daesh. The 15-year-old student rushed at the teacher in broad daylight, chasing him and stabbing him from behind until he fell. The 35-year-old teacher’s shoulder and hand were injured in the attack. He survived by kicking the teenager off and using a Torah he was carrying as a shield. Prosecutor Brice Robin explained at a news conference that the teenager "has the profile of someone who was radicalised on the Internet.” The teen, who will turn...

Solomon"s seal is coming into play, This is not just another day, For I have woven my body into one, And this is something that must be done, So stay within the fabric of my Word, Dismiss the lies that you have heard, For the eye of the needle waits for you, But only in true unity may you pass through, So let the child within begin,for a pure heart is free of sin, Allow my virtue to take you through, That is my spirit inside of you! Galatians 3:28 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor...

Maybe it's the centuries of living under Christian and Muslim rule. Maybe it's the history of forced conversion. Maybe it's that there's no religion requirement for the Jewish afterlife. Whatever the reasons, Jews have traditionally been uncomfortable proselytizing. But a Maryland foundation is flouting the taboo by funding outreach programs to non-Jews in an effort to bring them into the fold. "Our primary purpose is to support programs that publicize Judaism to non-Jews," Ellen Gerecht, executive director of the National Center to Encourage Judaism, says from her second-floor office in Silver Spring, Maryland. "We think Judaism has a lot to...

A Jewish group offering therapy for same-sex attraction will be ceasing operations in January as a result of a lawsuit filed against it in New Jersey. Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing, also called JONAH International, sent an email to supporters on New Year's Eve announcing the closure. "The N.J. court delivered its final judgement on Dec. 18, 2015. Under the order, JONAH must permanently cease operations, including providing referrals and operating its website and listserv,"read the email. "That means that our site, www.jonahweb.org, will no longer be available online after mid- January 2016, and neither of us will be...

The leader of a far-right organization in Israel reportedly is calling for Christmas celebrations to be banned in the country where, according to the Christian Bible, Jesus lived, sparking outrage from religious groups who are demanding an investigation into his remarks. Benzi Gopstein of Lehava wrote "Christmas has no place in the Holy Land" on an ultra-Orthodox Jewish website earlier this week, according to the Daily Telegraph and other Israeli media outlets. Gopstein also called on Christians to be expelled from Israel. "Let us remove the vampires before they once again drink our blood," Gopstein wrote.

If you have been a loyal reader, you may remember that I have written previous columns about Jews and Christmas. Two years ago I wrote The Jewish Joy of Christmas Music; last year it was the Jewish Joy of Christmas Lights. A Christian friend suggested that I complete the process and attend services. So for my final column on Jews sharing Christmas in this Christian country, I decided that would be fine idea. Then came the dilemma which services to attend. Of course, there are the more traditional Catholic services. I considered the myriad of other Protestant versions of Christianity. I knew...

CARDINAL KOCH & RABBI ROSEN Catholics should not try to convert Jews and should work with them to fight anti-Semitism, the Vatican said on Thursday in a major document drawing the Church further away from the strained relations of the past. It was the latest move on a host of issues, such as gay rights and re-marriage, that the Vatican or Pope Francis have made showing a desire to be more compassionate and open and to move further away from entrenched traditions. In the past, for example, Catholic prayers have denounced Jews for not believing in Jesus. Jews have also...

WEST HARTFORD — Emanuel Synagogue has enhanced their security measures after a pair of women who attended services Saturday dressed in headscarves and robes acted "out of the ordinary," said Rabbi David Small.

BEIT SHEMESH, Israel — The carved stone block is about the size of an occasional table. It has held its secrets for two millenniums. Whoever engraved its enigmatic symbols was apparently depicting the ancient Jewish temples. But what makes the stone such a rare find in biblical archaeology, according to scholars, is that when it was carved, the Second Temple still stood in Jerusalem for the carver to see. The stone is a kind of ancient snapshot. And it is upending some long-held scholarly assumptions about ancient synagogues and their relationship with the Temple, a center of Jewish pilgrimage and...

One of the people killed in the brutal slayings in San Bernardino this week was a Messianic Jew, Nicholas Thalasinos. You may not have heard about that because there is no media narrative served by pointing it out. His particular religious belief, that Jesus Christ is his savior, is of no consequence to the sorts of people who drive the mainstream media’s dramatic storytelling. Thursday’s coverage of the terror in San Bernardino was rife with lunacy and idiocy, and in that regard CNN had an especially banner day. But perhaps no moment was more awful or galling than when CNN...

It is also now known that just two weeks before the shooting rampage, Farook got into a heated argument with a Messianic Jewish colleague about Islam. The gunman's co-worker, 52-year-old Nicholas Thalasinos, was identified today as one of the victims in the attacks. Kuuleme Stephens said she happened to call Thalasinos while he was at work and having a discussion with Farook. Thalasinos identified Farook by name and told her the 28-year-old believed Islam was a peaceful religion. She added that Farook said Americans don't understand Islam. Stephens said both men worked as county restaurant inspectors and regularly discussed politics...

December 3, 2015: GOP Presidential candidate and front-runner Donald Trump was one of several Presidential candidates to speak at the 2015 Republican Jewish Coalition's Presidential Forum. It got a little awkward there for a minute when he started taking questions and someone asked about his feelings on Jerusalem being the undisputed capital of Israel. He didn't exactly answer the quarstion...

Whatever one thinks about the controversy over Syrian refugees and ISIS, Whoopi Goldberg's recent comments on national television trying to convince us that Christian refugees are just as scary as Muslims disseminates an idea that circulates widely on the internet, i.e., that Hitler was a Christian. She stated, "There have been a lot of horrifying there have been a lot of monster Christians. Hitler was a Christian." When her interlocutors balked at this, she then defended her position by saying, "He didn't like the Catholics, remember? So he thought of himself as a Christian person." Goldberg apparently doesn't understand that...

The president of the UC Santa Cruz Jewish Student Union (JSU) was warned to abstain”from voting earlier this week on a pro-BDS resolution because he was “elected with a Jewish agenda.” JNS.org reports that the incident occurred prior to a vote by the council on an earlier Israel divestment bill. On Tuesday, the UCSC student council voted 28 for and five against, with seven abstaining, to reinstate a divestment resolution that had been vetoed in 2014. In a text message sent to President Daniel Bernstein prior to that vote, the sender wrote, “You will be abstaining, as the president of...

AP - The largest movement of Judaism in the U.S. passed the most far-reaching resolution in support of transgender rights of any major religious organization, saying Thursday that it's a continuation of a tradition of inclusion in the Reform Jewish movement.

Haredi Orthodox Jews will soon account for half of the British Jewish population, according to a study of the kingdom’s Jewis