Jewish & World News

The British capital’s new Jewish community center buried a time capsule on Wednesday on the site of its purpose- built building to give the next generation a glimpse of how London Jews went about their lives in 2013. The time capsule was buried in the piazza floor at the state-of-the-art building – known as JW3, and located in Hampstead, northwest London – which is nearing completion and will be one of the largest Jewish community centers in Europe when it opens in September.

Researchers of Polish Jewry are set to gain online access to more than 1 million new documents following an agreement signed by the Polish State Archives. Under the agreement signed last week, Jewish Records Indexing-Poland will receive indices to the documents from the Polish archives authority and place them on the website of the online database within one year, a JRI-Poland statement read.

Millions of Americans will be honoring the legacy of America’s presidents on Monday—even though a national Presidents Day holiday is pure fiction. The annual event is also pegged to a gigantic motor vehicle sales push in neighborhoods across the country, which is definitely not fictional.

Oxford and Cambridge universities are putting aside an historic rivalry in a bid to acquire thousands of rare texts that give insight into Jewish life and culture from the medieval era until the 19th century. This week the two institutions launched a fundraising drive to acquire the "Lewis-Gibson Genizah Collection", which consists of more than 1,700 fragments of historic Hebrew documents, of both religious and secular importance, including a 12th century engagement deed, a witness account of the Crusades and a fragment of the Rambam's Commentary on the Mishnah written by the scholar himself.

Tuesday marks nine years since the northeast was plunged into darkness by a blackout that lasted for days. “A river of power outage refugees pouring over the Brooklyn Bridge,” WCBS 880′s Rich Lamb reported on August 14, 2003. There was no electricity and, therefore, no subway service. “Hundreds of people are all over the sidewalks,” then WCBS 880 reporter Martin DiCaro said. Since the blackout of 2003, 16,000 miles of new transmission lines have been added to the northeast grid. But Jerry Kremer, chairman of the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance (AREA) told WCBS 880 reporter Marla Diamond that we’re still at risk. “It’s just not a sexy enough issue for people,” he said. “They just assume that the lights are always going to be on, and it’s a bad assumption because the fact of the matter is, the money hasn’t been put into it, and there’s no political pressure to make all of the changes.” “We have to protect the system. We have to upgrade it,...

A Roman trading ship from the time of the Caesars has been discovered off the coast of Italy, reportedly in such good condition that some of the food may still be preserved inside the storage jars. Following up on a tip from local fishermen, police divers used a remotely operated vehicle to locate the ship, which was preserved within layers of mud at a depth of 230 feet (70 meters) in the waters near the port city of Genoa. The ship is thought to date back to sometime between the 1st century B.C. and the 2nd century — when Julius Caesar and his imperial heirs held sway in Rome.

Antiquities Authority archeological excavations at the foothills of Akko's southern wall have revealed apparatuses belonging to a port which was operational in the Hellenistic period (2-3 century BC) – and was the most important port in Israel at the time. The findings were discovered during archeological excavations being carried out as part of an Old Akko Development Company wall conservation project, funded by the Israel Land Administration.

On July 16, 1897, a struggle between the father of political Zionism Theodor Herzl and a group of anti-Zionist rabbis gathered momentum as Herzl published his article "Protest Rabbiner" (Protest Rabbis) in his German newspaper Die Welt. For several months Herzl had been planning the first Zionist Congress, which was originally slated to be held in Munich in August that year. However, Herzl faced a wave of opposition by European rabbis, in a battle that continued through and after the creation of the state of Israel and that is still raging today.

On Dec. 17, 1862, as the Civil War entered its second winter, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant issued the most notorious anti-Jewish official order in American history: “The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.” Known as General Orders No. 11, the document blamed Jews for the widespread smuggling and cotton speculation that affected the area under Grant’s command. That area, known as the “Department of the Tennessee,” stretched from northern Mississippi to Cairo, Ill., and from the Mississippi River to the Tennessee River. Grant ordered Jews expelled from every inch of it and warned that “any one returning ... will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners.” Lest anyone try to change his mind, Grant made clear that “no passes will be given these people to visit hea...

Shortly after 8 a.m. on March 16, 1984, like every other morning, CIA station chief in Beirut William Buckley left his 10th floor penthouse apartment in the western part of the city for the American Embassy. On that morning, he had decided to drive himself to work, against regulations for US officials in Lebanon at the time due to the danger of kidnapping. All non-essential staff and diplomats’ family members had been evacuated from the country a month earlier. As recalled at the time by the manager of Buckley’s apartment building, the CIA officer walked out of the building that morning and got into his car, parked in an adjacent lot. Almost immediately after leaving the parking lot, a white Renault in front of him stopped short and forced him to a stop. A gunman walked up to Buckley, pointed a pistol at his head and put him into the Renault without a fight. Aside from in two disturbing videos sent to US diplomats in the following months, he would never be seen alive again.

On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein walked into the Ibrahim Mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in his IDF reserve uniform with his army-issued Galil assault rifle slung over his shoulder, carrying at least three full magazines of ammunition. The mosque packed for early-morning Ramadan prayers. As he entered, Goldstein opened fire at the kneeling worshipers, killing 29 and wounding at least 125 unarmed Palestinians. After finally running out of ammunition, he was hit over the head with a fire extinguisher and beaten to death by survivors of the massacre. Riots broke out across the West Bank after the massacre and continue for two days. More than 20 more Palestinians and nearly 10 Jews were killed in the unrest in the two days following the initial murders. In the months after, Hamas carried out two terror attacks, which it said were a response to the massacre in Hebron.

The author of a history of Jews in the Soviet Union has won a $100,000 award. The Jewish Book Council announced Wednesday that Gal Beckerman's "When They Come for Us We'll Be Gone" has won the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. It was Beckerman's first book.

For nearly 120 years the Jewish community has come together here in the Norma section of Pittsgrove Township to bury their families and friends at Alliance Cemetery. But behind each the 5,000 or more graves is a story, a history of what this community once was – one of discovery, hope, and faith. In 1882, 43 families escaped the pogroms of Russia and settled in the tiny rural community of Norma as the first Jewish agricultural colony in the United States. They belonged to the “Am Olam Movement” that believed in a return to the soil. They organized a Chevra Kadisha or “Holy Society,” built a synagogue, and in 1891 they founded Alliance Cemetery. “There are a lot of families that are still here that have historic ties to the early settlers,” said the secretary of the Alliance Cemetery, Mark Kutner. Many of the family names are still recognizable today, like Nunberg, Helig, Berkowitz, Brotman and Greenblatt. Jay Greenblatt, who is the grandson of pioneer Jacob Greenblatt, has becom...

On January 17, 1991, the United States and a coalition of Arab and Western countries began bombarding Iraq to force its withdrawal from neighboring Kuwait , which it had invaded five months earlier. The war had further-reaching consequences than just Iraq ’s control over Gulf oil fields, however. Making good on his threats, Saddam Hussein would fire dozens of SCUD missiles at Israel , his retaliation for the war being launched against him. Additionally, the war would have serious consequences for Palestinians living in the Gulf and for the international standing of the PLO leadership.

The explosion and sinking of an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday has created a potentially serious environmental situation, though experts are not sure how bad it might be. That all depends on whether the oil from the rig's well spills and where it goes.