Freedom and dignity

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas again insisted at a two-day “Freedom and Dignity” conference in Ramallah last week that Palestinians who murder Israeli Jews cannot be punished.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/30/abbas-palestinians-who-kill-jews-cannot-be-punishe/#ixzz2S1JSc8ej

Jewish American heritage month

Presidential Proclamation -- Jewish American Heritage Month, 2013

Jewish sorcery

An Iranian regime official and a website close to the regime have recently accused the Jews of engaging in sorcery and of employing it against Iran.
Read more: http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/7154.htm

Mishneh Torah at auction

A 550-year-old Jewish holy book is expected to reach around $5 million in a New York auction.

The copy of the Mishneh Torah, from Italy around 1457, is an early copy of the code of Jewish law assembled by Maimonides.
The book, with an estimate of $4.5 million to $6 million (£2.8 million to £3.9 million), forms part of a collection of Jewish artefacts, or Judaica, expected to reach $11 million (£7 million) at Sotheby's. The collection belongs to philanthropist and former hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt and his wife, Judy.
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/500yearold-jewish-holy-book-mishneh-torah-expected-to-make-5m-in-new-york-auction-8594957.html

New Women of the Wall challenge

Women seeking equal prayer rights at the Western Wall are planning a further challenge to Jewish Orthodox tradition at the site after a court ruling bolstered their cause, an activist said on Sunday.
The Women of the Wall movement hopes to have its members read from a Torah (holy scriptures) scroll at the Jerusalem site, a ritual reserved under Orthodox practice for men only, when it holds its monthly prayer session there on May 10, according to Anat Hoffman, a leader of the group.
Read more: http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/04/28/israel-wall-idINDEE93R04L20130428

Accidents happen

The New York man accused of killing an entire Brooklyn family in a brutal hit-and-run crash last month leading to his arrest across state lines is defending himself while saying 'accidents happen.'
'Sure I played a part, I couldn't stop. Accidents happen,' Julio Acevedo told WABC Newsin a jailhouse interview while being held without bond on three counts of vehicular manslaughter in the March 3 crash.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315712/Julio-Acevedo-Driver-hit-run-killed-Orthodox-Jewish-family-denies-guilt-says-accidents-happen.html#ixzz2RhFhDhw5


Africa's oldest synagogue is playing host to that rarity in the Arab world - a religious gathering of hundreds of Jews drawn from Europe and Israel.

Guarded by armed Tunisian police, Jewish revelers chant and dance in a three-day pilgrimage to the El Ghriba synagogue at an island resort 500 km south of Tunis.
Continue reading: http://news.yahoo.com/jews-revive-annual-pilgrimage-africas-oldest-synagogue-152347681.html

Petition to keep Galliano out

Not everyone has forgiven former Dior designer John Galliano for his anti-Semitic tirade in 2011. Galliano was recently hired to teach a master course at Parsons fashion school in New York City, but some students say that's not OK.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/fashion/petition-john-galliano-parsons-article-1.1327134#ixzz2RV9x9Ncr

The anti-Get bill

Lawmakers OK Anti-Sharia Bill That's Accidentally Anti-Jewish, Too

Casablanca Jewish Museum reopens

The Museum of Moroccan Judaism, one of the only institutions of its kind in the Arab world, was reopened in Casablanca following months of renovations.
Continue reading: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2013/04/23/3124891/casablanca-jewish-museum-re-opened-after-renovations

LA week of learning

Jewish leaders and members of the public will explore Jewish wisdom and wellness during a "week of learning," in Los Angeles, officials say.
The Jewish Wisdom & Wellness week is co-hosted by Cedars-Sinai and the Kalsman Institute on Judaism & Health and the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2013/04/21/Los-Angeles-events-explore-Jewish-wisdom-and-wellness/UPI-46461366574395/#ixzz2RD3tUNQC

Vandalizing mezuzahs

Several Muslim students were expelled from an Israeli college after they were caught vandalizing mezuzahs, according to press reports in Israel.

Students at Ruppin College were horrified to learn that two Muslim students studying at the college vandalized mezuzahs by ripping them and throwing them in the toilet.
Read more: http://www.yourjewishnews.com/2013/04/26780.html

Hate on the subway

SEE IT: Wild Brooklyn melee erupts as NYPD arrests Muslim teen for allegedly taunting Jewish subway rider
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/melee-erupts-cops-arrest-muslim-teen-taunting-jewish-subway-rider-article-1.1320655#ixzz2Qt9lcJEu

Soros' accidental obituary

Reuters accidentally published on Thursday a prepared obituary for George Soros, billionaire philanthropist and legendary liberal bankroller.
Read more: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/18/xx-year-old-george-soros-dies-according-to-a-bungled-reuters-obituary/

Salonika's Jews

The Nazis’ mass deportations of Jews from Greece in 1943 and 1944 largely ended the life of a thriving community, one responsible for centuries of important contributions to Jewish culture and to the life of the land in which the community lived. Eighty-six percent of Greece’s prewar Jewish population perished. In Salonika, where 70 percent of Greek Jews lived, the death rate exceeded 90 percent. While the German campaign to kill the Jews is no secret, few in Greece acknowledge that the Germans had the support of Greek administrators and police.
Continue reading: http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/6341/features/the-betrayal-of-salonikas-jews/

Apology for use of the word "jew"

A Republican lawmaker from Duncan has apologized for a derogatory remark he made toward Jewish people while debating a bill on the House floor.
Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Duncan-lawmaker-apologizes-for-anti-Jewish-remark-4442857.php#ixzz2QlagRDjV

Safe shelter in the Philippines

The 1993 Best Picture movie, Schindler’s List, informed the world about Austrian industrialist Oskar Schindler and how he saved 1,100 Polish Jews during WWII by hiring them as workers in his factory. A new documentary, Rescue in the Philippines: Refuge From the Holocaust, being shown this month in hundreds of PBS stations throughout the US, will now inform the world about Philippine Commonwealth President Manuel L. Quezon and the role he played in helping German Jews escape Nazi persecution in 1939 by providing them with visas and safe shelter in the Philippines.
Read more: http://globalnation.inquirer.net/72279/philippines-a-jewish-refuge-from-the-holocaust#ixzz2QeLXWeft

Racially vilified in Australia

A Caulfield North soccer player who says he was spat on and his team verbally abused for being Jewish during a match wants the players responsible banned from the game.
South Port United Football Club player Simon Fixler said he was racially vilified and spat on during a VicSoccer league match against Richmond club NK Bunker on Sunday.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/i-was-spat-on-abused-jewish-soccer-player-says-20130416-2hxnr.html#ixzz2QbA8QcjB

New complaint against Twitter

A French Jewish group that sued Twitter for hosting anti-Semitic content lodged a fresh complaint against the social networking service.

The latest complaint by the Union of Jewish Students of France, or UEJF, was filed on April 12 with the Paris Public Prosecutor’s office against Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. UEJF and another group, J’ACCUSE, said in the complaint that Costolo was “responsible for racial defamation and publicly inciting to discrimination, hate or violence toward Jews.”

The complaint concerns tweets that call for killing Jews and praising the Holocaust.
Read more: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2013/04/15/3124176/fresh-complaint-on-anti-semitism-on-twitter-filed-in-france

More than a dozen tombstones at the Jewish section of Milan's main cemetery were vandalized.
Vandals over the weekend tore off Stars of David decorating some 13 tombstones. Police in the northern Italian city are investigating.
Continue reading: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2013/04/15/3124256/milan-mayor-condemns-jewish-cemetery-vandalism

Silencing Geller

The polyglot

Most teens stuggle to master a few sentences in Hebrew for their bar mitzvahs.
Not Timothy Doner, now 17. He began studying Hebrew — and then taught himself about 19 more languages in the four years that followed.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/new-york-teen-learns-20-foreign-languages-years-article-1.1315113#ixzz2QOAUZnXM

Underground

The BBC reviews a new documentary in an article titled documentary Story of Jewish families who lived underground for 511 days.

Failure to brng to justice

The Israel branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center on Sunday criticized Australia and several other countries for failing to do enough to bring perpetrators of the Holocaust to justice.
Read more: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4365219,00.html

2000-year-old ritual bath discovered

The remains of a 2,000-year-old ritual bath have come to light in Jerusalem, Israeli archaeologists say.
Read more: http://www.timesofisrael.com/2000-year-old-ritual-bath-uncovered-in-jerusalem/

Suspect arrested

Suspected firebug Rubin Ubiles, 35, of Williamsburg is in custody today after 12 mezuzahs were burned in Williamsburg, police sources told The Post.
Police sources say Ubiles has been arrested dozens of times, including for assault, robbery, burglary, drug possession and petit larceny.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/mezuzah_vandal_strikes_again_xYQoPsvXxKlgQKitXqJRSO

Suspect identified

Police have identified a suspect in a string of potential hate crimes in New York in which 12 mezuzahs were set ablaze as they hung on door frames outside Jews' homes.
Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/10/justice/new-york-jewish-artifacts-burned/index.html

Redistricting

Free Beacon reports:

 

“For several months the Florida Democratic Party has engaged in a legal fight over redistricting in Florida,” Florida Democratic chair Rod Smith wrote to a representative of the Teamsters Union in March 2012. “We believe that Florida can be turned from red to blue if we are successful in our efforts.”

Democratic consultant Brad Wieneke described the gerrymander in one email chain on Florida’s 23rd Congressional District, which Slate has called the 23rd one of “the most gerrymandered congressional districts” in the country and which Wasserman Schultz represents in Congress.

“They want to scoop as many Jews out of Tamarac and Sunrise as they can,” Wieneke wrote.

Read more: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/07/revealed-alleged-democratic-scheme-to-gerrymander-florida/

Museum of the History of Polish Jews

In October 2013, President Barack Obama and Israeli President Shimon Peres are expected to attend the opening of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. The presence of such dignitaries attests to the tremendous significance that this endeavor holds for Jews worldwide as well as Poles.
Continue reading: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacques-berlinerblau/life-not-death-a-new-museum-of-jewish-history-in-warsaw_b_3016715.html

Matisse's rightful owner

The family of late Paris gallery owner Paul Rosenberg has demanded that the Henie Onstand Arts Center in Oslo return a number of paintings seized from him during the German occupation of Paris during World War II .
Read more: http://en.artron.net/news/news.php?newid=433982

The minister's quote

Egypt’s minister of religious endowments in an interview quoted a verse from the Koran about killing Jews.
The interview with Talaat Mohamed Afifi Salem was aired last month on Sada Al-Balad TV on March 14, according to Washington D.C.-based Middle East Media Research Institute.
Read more: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2013/04/05/3123596/egyptian-minister-quotes-koran-verse-on-killing-jews

To light a flame

Professor Judea Pearl, father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, will light a memorial flame in Jerusalem on Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) this year.
He will take part on the morning of April 15 in the Jewish Agency’s annual ceremony, which honors Jews murdered outside Israel in terrorist attacks or acts of anti-Semitism as well as fallen IDF soldiers.
Read more: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/166792

Letter to the Simon Wiesenthal Center

LETTER FROM DUTCH PM RUTTE TO SWC IN REGARDS TO ANTI-SEMITIC VIDEO

Prioritizing the living

Every month or so, a highly emotional email lands in the inbox of Martin Kornfeld, CEO of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Slovakia.

The authors invariably are Western tourists appalled by the neglect they witnessed during visits to one of the hundreds of Jewish cemeteries scattered across the country. Often their emails concern the final resting place of their relatives amid overgrown grasses and overturned tombstones.

“They want us to fix it,” Kornfeld told JTA. “But ours is a small and not wealthy community that prioritizes the living.”
Continue reading: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2013/04/03/3123431/eastern-european-communities-overwhelmed-by-costs-of-cemetery-upkeep

Boy dies while filming bar mitzvah video

In a devastating accident, an Israeli boy died while shooting a bar mitzvah music video.
Read more: http://www.yourjewishnews.com/2013/04/jv1653.html