Israel – Rabbi Yehuda Leib Steinman, one of the leaders of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community ruled recently that during flights one is best advised to pray the Amidah prayer (The Standing Prayer) sitting down, restfully, rather than standing up. This was his answer to haredi yeshiva students currently in the midst of the “Bein Hazmanim” holiday [...]

Washington – Republicans wanted an election-season ethics case against Democratic powerhouse Rep. Charles Rangel of New York. And now, it looks like they have one. A House ethics panel of four Democrats and four Republicans, who will determine Rangel’s guilt or innocence on 13 ethics charges, held its organizational meeting Thursday. The message going forward, from [...]

Ashkelon, Israel – A rocket fired from the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun exploded in the heart of a populated area in the southern city of Ashkelon on Friday morning. Eight people suffered shock. Two empty floors of an apartment building, several cars and a nearby pavement sustained damage. Many windows were shattered. Police [...]

London – A Holocaust survivor who lost half his family at the hands of the Nazis today told how he was forced to go to court to prove he is Jewish. Former film producer Joseph Marks, 81, from Shepperton, said he was “grilled” by rabbis as he tried to prove his ancestry. He wanted to join [...]

Tehran, Iran – President Ahmadinejad has a penchant for the somewhat loony, as when last weekend he denounced Paul the Octopus, omniscient predictor of eight consecutive World Cup matches, as a symbol of decadence and purveyor of “Western propaganda and superstition.” But for all his clownishness, Ahmadinejad is nonetheless calculating and dangerous. What “two countries” was [...]

Oak Park, CA – Words spray-painted on the front wall of a small community synagogue in the 5900 block of Conifer Street in Oak Park stunned neighbors and religious leaders alike. Vandals tagged the Chabad house of worship with the message: “Get out of Oak Park.” “It’s horrible,” said Abby Winstone, who lives across the street from [...]

New York, NY – The Goldman Sachs company is telling employees that they will no longer be able to get away with profanity in electronic messages. That means all 34,000 traders, investment bankers and other Goldman employees must restrain themselves from using a vast vocabulary of oft-used dirty words on Wall Street, including the six-letter [...]

Karmiel, Israel – What is a woman to do when her husband attends yeshiva school and there is no one making a living for the family? Ask a group of haredi mothers who took the matter into their own hands – and started working for a high tech company established especially for women in their [...]

New Zealand – The small Jewish community has begun mounting a legal case against the nation’s centre-right government in a bid to overturn a ban on the kosher slaughter of meat. Community spokesperson David Zwartz said that attempts to convince Agriculture Minister David Carter to reverse the ban on shechitah had failed, prompting Jewish leaders to [...]

Israel – Rabbis are set to ban the burka for a small group of radical Jewish women who have taken to wearing it. Two years ago, it emerged that around 100 women in the city of Beit Shemesh had begun to cover their faces with a veil and wear numerous layers of clothing to obscure their [...]