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Rabbi Yaakov Ruzah’s eyes are privy to unspeakable horrors. Horrors that can shake even a man like Ruzah, the world’s foremost rabbinic authority on the laws of death and mourning. “What I saw after October 7, I haven’t seen in my entire career,” says Ruzah as he sits at his living room table in Bat Yam, a city just south of Tel Aviv, where he serves pro bono as chief rabbi. “You saw how they purposely desecrated bodies, you saw bodies of babies… you never see babies like this… It is very difficult. I am managing to hold on, but...

Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef commented on reports of the chemical weapons attack in Syria. "I have said before and I repeat, in Syria there is a brutal genocide of both women and children with weapons of mass destruction.” Rabbi Yosef said that “There is a moral obligation not to remain silent and to try to stop the massacre.”

For the first time since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, a chief rabbinical chaplain is servicing the spiritual and religious needs of Jewish soldiers in Russia's armed forces and various security services. Rabbi Gurevich and three Russian Jewish soldiers. Photo: Courtesy Rabbi Aharon Gurevich, 34, was appointed after being asked to fill the role by the chief rabbi of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Russia, Rabbi Berel Lazar, who had received official permission from the Russian government to establish a military rabbinate. Upon accepting the post, Gurevich was granted the rank of colonel by Russian authorities and was given permission to visit...

The Israel Religious Action Center, along with Kibbutz Gezer and Rabbi Miri Gold filed a petition with the High Court of Justice on Tuesday demanding to recognize rabbis outside the Orthodox movement and regulate the process of nomination of non-Orthodox rabbis to public positions. The petitioners argued that at present, the state's religious institutions fund hundreds of regional, city, town, and neighborhood rabbis from public sources. The common denominator of these rabbis is that they are all Orthodox men, they added. According to Israel Radio, the petitioners insisted that such a situation constituted flagrant discrimination against an entire sector of...

Oct. 16, 2003 Palestinians set fire to Joseph's Tomb By MARGOT DUDKEVITCH Joseph's Tomb set on fire Photo: AP Advertisement The IDF permitted hundreds of Jewish worshippers access to Joseph's Tomb in Nablus to pray at the shrine early Thursday. Later the worshippers left in buses accompanied by IDF forces who guarded them throughout the visit. Shortly after their departure a group of Palestinian youths arrived at the site and set fire to the shrine throwing burning tires inside the compound. The local Palestinian fire brigade arrived and extinguished the flames. It was the fourth time authorization was given to...

More CommentsAshkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau decried Belgium's hypocrisy: "The thought that a nation that stood by and watched when Jewish blood was spilt like water and ignored victims' cries, is now elevating itself to the position of world policeman - is outrageous in the extreme." He condemned the fact that Belgium, "which remained quiet when it should have been screaming out in the name of humanity," is now speaking out "so pretentiously and hypocritically to cast fault on IDF soldiers and its commanders, who have endangered their own lives many times in order to refrain from injuring innocent...

BERLIN - Berlin's chief rabbi has received a threatening letter full of ashes, according to a published report. The envelope, on which was scrawled "Lie or Truth - Holocaust II" was sent anonymously to Rabbi Chaim Rozwaski. Inside it was a plastic bag containing a black, ash-like powdery substance, said the report in Friday's editions of Der Tagesspiegel newspaper. Rozwaski, 67, a Holocaust survivor, told the paper, "It is tragic to have lived through this horror as a child and to experience now to what frightening extent anti-Semitism has grown in Germany today." Rozwaski, who came to Germany from America...

The Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, is no stranger to controversy, and he has certainly stirred one up with his latest remarks about Israel. Dr Sacks sees the present conflict as "tragic, because it is forcing Israel into postures that are incompatible in the long run with our deepest ideals". He cannot abide the "hatreds and insensitivities that in the long run are corrupting to a culture". He is made "very uncomfortable as a Jew" by "things that happen on a daily basis". The only example he gives is his "profound shock" at pictures of cheery Israeli soldiers posing with a...