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News Portal Home  Judaism Judaism
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Sunday, 30 November 2008 |
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Sunday to do everything necessary to protect Jewish centres across the world after nine Israelis were killed in assaults by Islamist militants in the Indian city of Mumbai. "Israel is doing, and will continue to do anywhere, whatever it takes to protect Jewish institutions," Olmert told a weekly cabinet meeting. Israel's embassies and official representations across the world are always heavily guarded by Israeli and local security forces. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Saturday, 08 November 2008 |
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The Orthodox Jewish parents of a boy whom doctors have ruled "brain-dead" are fighting in court to keep him on life support, arguing that their religion considers him still alive. Doctors at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington want to end treatment for Motl Brody, 12, whom they declared deceased Wednesday after brain cancer left him with no brain activity, the hospital's lawyer Kenneth Rosenau told AFP. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Sunday, 28 September 2008 |
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A sacred time of reflection and hope for the Jewish people, this year’s High Holy Days will also be a time for Detroit Jewry to remember their brethren in Israel and their quest for peace. The 3-week Jewish High Holy Days season begins with the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, marking the beginning of the year 5769 on the Jewish calendar. This year, Rosh Hashana begins Monday, Sept. 29. What they are: Selichot, or penitential prayers, are special services held on the Saturday night preceding the New Year. They signal the approach of the High Holy Days. Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are the two most sacred holidays in the Jewish faith, and are referred to as the High Holy Days. The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, begins the 10 Days of Repentance, which conclude with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Sunday, 14 September 2008 |
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A gay couple will wed in a synagogue in an Australian first which could split the Jewish community. Traditional Judaism regards homosexuality as "abhorrent", but three progressive rabbis have agreed to conduct the Sydney ceremony for bookshop owner Scott Whitmont, 47, and nurse Christopher Whitmont-Stein, 38. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Monday, 11 August 2008 |
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Despite the political crisis, the lack of food and supplies and increasing inflation, a small synagogue in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe was able to achieve a minyan for Tisha Be'av services on Saturday. "It's easy to get a minyan, but it's difficult to get the people to the synagogue," Moshe Silberhaft, the spiritual leader and CEO of the African Jewish Congress as well as the president of the Zimbabwe Fund, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Monday, 11 August 2008 |
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A French newspaper satirist has sparked a feverish tug-of-war over free speech and anti-Semitism with a biting column on the engagement of President Nicolas Sarkozy's son to a Jewish heiress. Published on July 2 in the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the piece cost the 79-year-old Sine, a veteran cartoonist and anarchist writer whose real name is Maurice Sinet, his job after he refused to apologise. Since then it has unleashed a torrent of op-ed articles, blog entries, petitions and counter-petitions as French writers, politicians and armchair commentators line up to vilify or defend him. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Wednesday, 16 July 2008 |
An ancient Hebrew tablet to be highlighted at an Israeli conference of biblical scholars today could link Christianity far more intimately with Judaism than previously recognised. According to Israel Knohl, a professor of Bible studies at the Hebrew University, the 87-line tablet, dating from the years before the birth of Jesus, shows the idea that the messiah would be resurrected after three days is not original to Christianity. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Sunday, 08 June 2008 |
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A decade after architect Daniel Libeskind began his dramatic design for San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum - rising from the red-brick shell of an abandoned landmark languishing behind a Mission Street parking lot - the new museum finally opens its glass doors to the public Sunday. Delayed for several years by the post-9/11 recession that hobbled many capital campaigns, a failed merger with Berkeley's Judah L. Magnes Museum and changes in the city's plans for the one-acre plaza on which it sits, the 63,000-square-foot, shimmering blue Contemporary Jewish Museum is the newest addition to the city's vital Yerba Buena arts district. Architecturally and programmatically, it aims to connect the past and present. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Sunday, 23 March 2008 |
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You couldn't get a table in any Tel Aviv café on Friday as Israelis took advantage of the comfortable weather and headed out in droves to join in on the Purim festivities. Parents, children and domestic pets left no costume unrepresented in the scores of parades and carnivals that overtook Israel's streets on an unusually sunny March weekend – which weather forecasts only stands to grow even warmer. In southern Israel, celebrations were briefly interrupted by a Palestinian rocket barrage from Gaza, however no injuries were caused and no damage was reported. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Tuesday, 26 February 2008 |
The two yeshivas established by the religious kibbutz movement - one on Kibbutz Ein Tzurim in the south and the other on Kibbutz Ma'aleh Gilboa in the north - have been a source of pride for the movement and a symbol of its educational philosophy. In those yeshivas, it is legitimate to engage in a scientific examination of biblical sources, and Torah study is combined with three full years of military service in a demanding five-year program. FULL ARTICLE LINK
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Friday, 04 January 2008 |
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Last week’s announcement by a spokesman for Prime Minister Olmert that his government will urge non-Jewish residents of Israel to convert to Judaism in order to increase the number of people listed as Jews has set off alarm bells across the Jewish world. The issue of conversion to Judaism is handled with exquisite precision in both Talmudic and halachic literature. The requirements to be met by the successful convert are many and circumscribed by the overall duty of the converter to employ all means to discourage the applicant. This should not come as a surprise – the process is meant to approximate the acceptance of the Torah at Mount Sinai by the Jewish people, who vowed to embrace the full panoply of God’s laws. No wonder, then, that would-be converts should have to meet as exacting a standard in order to take their place in Klal Yisrael. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Wednesday, 07 November 2007 |
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A study indicates most secular Israelis say they think the national authority overseeing Jewish religious issues is irrelevant and out of touch. Ynetnews said its study, done in conjunction with the Gesher Institute and involving 500 Hebrew-speaking Israelis, found 61 percent of secular Israelis view the National Authority of Religious Services as obsolete. The authority oversees such issues as marriage, divorce, conversion, kosher licensing and virtually every other aspect of Jewish life. Forty-five percent said the authority should be dismantled. Only 8 percent of ultra-Orthodox Jews expressed the same sentiment. FULL ARTICLE LINK
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Saturday, 01 September 2007 |
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It was set ablaze by the Nazis and left to rot by the Soviets, but Germany's biggest synagogue gleamed anew yesterday during an emotional service to celebrate its multi-million pound restoration. At the inauguration service in Berlin, frail holocaust survivors and Jewish escapees, who had pledged never to return to Germany, mixed with senior German politicians, including interior minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Saturday, 01 September 2007 |
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A major Jewish religious leader urged North America's Muslims on Friday to keep condemning violence committed in the name of Islam until the message sinks in. Speaking at the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said: "To all those who desecrate God's name by using religion to justify killing and terror, let us say together: Enough. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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Friday, 27 July 2007 |
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Ukrainian Jewish leaders are demanding the return of all Torah scrolls currently stored in state museums and archives. The call was issued during this week during a news conference in Kiev. Leaders of the Chabad-run Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, or FJC, the country’s leading Jewish religious umbrella organization, said Wednesday that claims by Ukrainian archives officials that the community mishandled several Torahs lent to it by the state have been proven groundless. FULL ARTICLE LINK |
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