Jewish News Roundup - Tuesday, December 20, 2011

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National Menorah to be lit near White House in Washington for 1st night of Hanukkah

A special lighting ceremony is planned for the National Hanukkah Menorah near the White House on the first night of the eight-day Jewish holiday.

On Tuesday, Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew will be a special guest to help light the menorah on the Ellipse. The lighting is scheduled for 4 p.m. Organizers say thousands of people are scheduled to attend. “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Band will perform. Read More.

Sweden honors centenary of WWII hero Wallenberg

Sweden will commemorate the centenary of the birth of Raoul Wallenberg in 2012 with a series of postage stamps and a touring exhibition about the World War II hero credited with rescuing tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews.

Organizers launched a photo exhibition about Wallenberg in Stockholm on Tuesday, and two new stamps that will go on sale in May. The exhibition will tour Hungary, Germany, Russia, Israel, the United States and Canada next year.

As Sweden's envoy in the Hungarian capital of Budapest from July 1944, Wallenberg saved 20,000 Jews by giving them Swedish travel documents, or moving them to safe houses. He also dissuaded German officers from massacring the 70,000 inhabitants of the city's ghetto.

However, he disappeared after being arrested by the Soviet army in Budapest in January 1945 and his fate has since remained one of the great mysteries of WWII. Read More.

Germany to raze neo-Nazi killers' home to avoid becoming shrine

The home of a trio of neo-Nazis believed to have killed nine immigrants and a policewoman will be razed at public expense, civic authorities in the eastern German city of Zwickau said Monday.

The city council want to cleanse all traces of the gang to thwart ghoulish tourists and neo-Nazis who have so far gathered at the site in a leafy affluent suburb where the trio rented the apartment using false names. Read More.

Tunisia’s newly elected president calls for country’s Jewish population to return

Tunisia’s newly elected president called Monday for the country’s Jewish population to return, in statements carried by the state news agency.

During a meeting with the country’s Grand Rabbi Haim Bittan, President Moncef Marzouki said that Tunisia’s Jews are full citizens and those that had left were welcome to return. His comments come almost two weeks after Israeli deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom called on the country’s remaining Jews to emigrate to Israel.

Tunisia presently has a Jewish population of 1,500, but in the 1960s there were 100,000. Most left following the 1967 war between Israel and Arab countries, and Socialist economic policies adopted by the government in the late 1960s also drove many Jewish business owners out of the country. Read More.

Satmar Grand Rabbi in Fiery Speech to 30,000 Condemns Those Who Bash President Obama, Says Central Rabbinical Organization

Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, the Satmar Grand Rabbi, speaking Saturday night (Dec. 17) at a gathering of 30,000 of his followers held in the New York State Armory on Bedford Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said that "True Torah Jews" is completely opposed to Jewish leaders who degrade President Obama.

The gathering is held annually to celebrate the rescue of the founding Satmar Grand Rabbi, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, from the hands of the Nazis in 1944.

"We live in a country of kindness," Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum said. "We enjoy freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The prophet Jeremiah (29:7) says, 'Seek out the welfare of the city where I have exiled you, and pray on its behalf to G-d.' This country in particular lets us live as we wish, and gives us the right to vote, but recently, certain self-appointed Jewish leaders have gotten up and insulted the President in the worst way. Read More.



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