A mumps outbreak in New York and New Jersey in which 97 percent of the more than 3,500 cases were Orthodox Jews was a result of the way Orthodox boys are schooled, according to a new study.
Last week’s episode was hardly the first time Israeli police stopped activist Anat Hoffman while she was leading a women’s prayer service at the Western Wall in violation of Israeli law.
The much-discussed article in the July/August Atlantic magazine begins with a story that likely will be familiar to any working mother. The author, Anne-Marie Slaughter, is at an evening work event talking to very important, very professional people, and all that’s really on her mind is the plight of her teenage son, who’s floundering at home without her.
When Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, granted a few hundred haredi Orthodox Jews an exemption from army service, it’s likely he never dreamed that 63 years later, tens of thousands of haredi Israelis would claim the exemption — or that the issue would be among the most contentious in modern Israel.
Some school bus drivers in Lakewood, N.J., are expressing their displeasure with having to work on Thanksgiving driving Orthodox Jewish students to school.
New York City authorities said they will shut down a city bus service run by Orthodox Jews if the group doesn\’t stop making women sit at the back of the bus.
Yoram Kaniuk, a rambunctious 81-year-old author, was hailed by Israeli secularists this week for winning a court victory that compelled the state to stop listing Judaism as his \”religion\” while keeping \”Jewish\” as his \”ethnicity.\” He is the first Israeli Jew to have done so.
It was tense conversation. The editor at NPR (clearly Jewish) was defending the reporting about violence in Brooklyn. Twenty years ago black mobs had taken to the streets after a car accident that took the life of a black child. Jews huddled in their homes in fear. Cars were torched, Jews beaten, Norman Rosenbaum, a Jewish student from Australia lay dead, killed by the mob. Police were held back by an incompetent mayor. The media whose job was to report the facts were creating a fantasy, claiming, “there are conflicts between blacks and Jews. Tensions are high as ethnic groups clash.” I told the editor she had the story wrong. There were no attacks by Jews, it was a one way battle. Finally in exasperation I yelled at her, “Jews are dying and you are lying.”
For the first time, Orthodox Jews in Australia’s capital city have a ritual bath. Mikvah Chaya Mushka Canberra opened its doors in Canberra this week for the small Jewish community of about 600 people. There is no Jewish school or kosher butcher, and Orthodox and Progressive Jews share a community center for prayer services, but local Jews believe a mikvah will attract more Jews to the capital.
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