London cops bust mass wedding at Haredi girls school for violating lockdown

British police busted a mass wedding held Thursday at a London high school for ultra-Orthodox Jewish girls in violation of virus lockdown rules....

UCLA opens center for music of the ‘American Jewish experience’

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — UCLA has opened a center to explore the history of Jewish music in America with an eye toward breaking ground. The Lowell...

Biden orders expanded aid to address growing hunger crisis in US amid pandemic

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President Joe Biden is ordering an expansion of government benefits for hungry Americans, after the coronavirus pandemic...

Duterte pushes the Philippines closer to Marcos-era martial-law

Revival of 'red-tagging' has set the country back decades

China's vaccine diplomacy and Turkey's choice

It is rather odd that Ankara has bought 50 million doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine, which is anything but cheap and its trials are still ongoing....

Israel's Population Is Growing, and Its Infrastructure Isn't Keeping Up

Anti-corruption CIO kicks off

Political neutrality and independence key to success Kim Jin-wook started work Friday as the inaugural head of the new Corruption Investigation...

Landmark year starts as treaty to ban nuke arms comes into force

A landmark year has started for the international movement to end the era of collective stupidity when nations threaten others with nuclear...

What would Leo Szilard make of reluctance over anti-nuke treaty?

There once was a Hungarian-born scientist who succeeded in persuading the United States to develop atomic bombs, but failed to stop the bombs from...

Israeli interpretation on the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring

The Israeli political, security and research decision-making circles have recently shown great interest in the tenth anniversary of the outbreak of...

McConnell calls to push Trump impeachment trial to February

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is proposing to push back the start of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial to February to...

Zagate denarne politike ECB

Dve zaporedni gospodarski krizi v zadnjih desetih letih sta v temeljih pretresli prevladujočo strategijo denarne politike za obvladovanje...

Biden names Massachusetts official Steph Pollack to senior roads post

WASHINGTON (JTA) — US President Joe Biden named Stephanie Pollack, the Massachusetts transportation secretary known for her ability as a Democrat...

The Eighth WPK DPRK Congress

From January 5 to January 13, the 8th congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) was held in North Korea, which marked a series of major...

COVID-19: Japan faces moment of truth PREMIUM

Amorphous time

The notion of time becomes remarkably amorphous in early chapters of the Book of Exodus, referred to in generalities, instead of specifics. Exodus...

Ahdit Tatim’ein: Proudly shot twice in Shefa-Amer!

  Earlier this week, I received my second shot of the Pfizer vaccine in the nearby small Arab city of Shefa-Amer. It was once a mixed city with...

A Message of Hope

Passover is, probably, the most joyful of our festivals. This has to do not only with an overall feeling of finally awakening nature but also with...

Raid on the Capitol: Reaction in the Arab World

“The US and Fake Democracy,” “The American Picture with Iraqi Flavor,” and “The Rising End of US Exceptionalism and Trumpism.” “America....

COVID-19. It’s all about behavior!

Vaccines are about 90% effective, depending on the data one reads, the type of mutation, and other factors. That means about one in ten vaccinated...

Čigav je svet okoli nas?

V času epidemičnih omejitev gibanja se marsikdo počuti še posebej ujetega. Naše misli potujejo marsikam po svetu, ki nam je bil, vsaj v naši...

Parshat Bo: The Meaning of Mitzvot

When we think of mitzvot (commandments), we may think of sacrifice, suppressing our will, or another burden to worry about. In Judaism, mitzvot are...

I support the IHRA definition and you should too

Anti-Israel activists at Florida State University (FSU) are working to reverse the university’s earlier decision to adopt the International...

The post-‘fake news’ era

The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower. The departure of Donald Trump and the arrival of Biden signaled not just...

Back from the brink or brinkmanship by Campaign Against Antisemitism?

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) was established in 2014. Its foundation grew out of extreme frustration with some of the policies...

The traumas of oppression and freedom

Parashat Bo Parashat Bo opens with the final plagues. Locusts devastate the remaining vegetation of Egypt. Darkness so thick that the rabbis tell...

Get My Payment

Individuals who were eligible for an economic impact payment but did not receive one, or were eligible for a larger payment than they received, may...

Now that Trump has gone, will truth return?

Donald J. Trump, one of the most controversial presidents in American history, has had to finally exit the stage. His prefacing everything with...

Can Religious and Secular Jews in Israel Get Along?

What message does the book “Letters to Talia” have to offer us today?  Doing a Weekly Podcast on Jewish Authors is quite a challenge. This week...

(GLOBALNA ARENA) Fantazijska tovarna laži

Od 6. januarja, ko je množica podpornikov Donalda Trumpa vdrla v ameriški Kapitol, so več deset izgrednikov že obtožili. Trump, ki je spodbudil...

Letters to the Editor: Biden, Listen to B’Tselem

Biden and Trump deliver vastly different messages

Joe Biden’s inauguration last week was the most heavily guarded in memory: Washington’s entire National Mall was fenced off; numerous military...

Global cooperation in the age of COVID-19

The deployment of COVID-19 vaccines brings hope that the onslaught of the virus will soon cease, but the unsettled world within which the virus...

Navalny’s return: But do most Russians even care about the attempt on his life?

MOSCOW – Russia’s main opposition leader Alexei Navalny is disturbing Russia’s laziest month. As in Soviet times, the New Year holiday...

Documentary highlights the ‘Human Factor’ in Israel-Palestinian peace talks

AP — Ready for a documentary about three decades of agonizing fits and starts of the Middle East peace process, from the perspective of US...

Jewish Harvard Medical School professor dies climbing in Pakistan’s mountains

(JTA) — A prominent Jewish doctor in Boston died this week while attempting a challenging ascent in the mountains of Pakistan. Alex Goldfarb, an...

Achieving the hard grade (Daf Yomi Pesachim 62)

Embed from Getty Images “Rabbi Yohanan took a clod of dirt and threw it at him In the middle of the today’s exposition on the details of...

Israel aced the vaccine rollout. But most of the world should learn from Vietnam

For most of 2020, the Southeast Asian country has kept the pandemic under control. Until late July, it had managed to keep the total case tally in...

Undercover Chabadniks

I’m a black-hatter, one of those Chabadniks who would love you to put on Tefillin (it will just take a minute). You might avert your gaze and...

Going from Trump to Biden, from insurrection to inauguration: what a relief!

So many people must have felt the same: what a relief. What a good taste the whole mostly televised inauguration ceremony was. It represented the...

Collecting bad wines

Ric Elias was among the passengers on the plane that Captain ‘Sully’ Sullenberger safely landed in the Hudson back in January of 2009. Determined...

Roman prosecutor requests charges for Egyptians accused in Regeni murder

Analysis. The Rome prosecutor is asking for the indictment of four national security officers. But it is very likely that there will be no...

Turkish indie music’s moment of introspection

Four of the most important figures in Turkish indie music decided that they have had enough of the city. They made the choice to escape the...

Police chief says trend of Haredi violence against cops only getting worse

Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai warned on Friday that the wave of violence directed at officers trying to enforce virus regulations by Haredi...

Kto sa smeje naposledy

Premiér sa tak môže smiať – zlomil odpor svojich koaličných partnerov, zodpovednosť za testovanie hodil na plecia samosprávy a z občanov...

Swiss court sentences Israeli diamond magnate to 5 years for corruption

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) — A Geneva court on Friday convicted Israeli diamond and minerals magnate Beny Steinmetz on charges of corruption of...

Khamenei account suspended after tweet of Trump golfing under warplane shadow

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office has posted a photomontage of former US President Donald Trump playing golf...

IDF says it shot down drone that crossed into Israeli airspace from Lebanon

The IDF shot down a drone that was crossing into Israeli airspace from Lebanon, the military said Friday. The drone was identified as it approached...

Social media, have mercy! FBI laments that deplatforming of ‘extremists’ makes it harder to spy on Americans

A former FBI profiler recently took to NBC to complain that while Big Tech restricting Americans’ ability to freely communicate was all well and...

EU fury at UK’s diplomatic snub shows it for what it is, a petty old boys network focused more on status than tackling big issues

Britain’s decision to downgrade the diplomatic standing of both its representative to the European Union and the bloc’s ambassador to the UK...