Jewish & World News

A southern New Jersey woman has her wedding ring back, nine years after she accidentally flushed it down her toilet. Paula Stanton was sure the diamond-encrusted gold ring was lost forever after she noticed it wasn't on her finger while she was cleaning her bathroom. Luckily, a member of Somers Point's public works department remembered Stanton mentioning the ring about three years ago. Last month, Ted Gogol was doing maintenance work near a manhole about 400 feet from Stanton's house. He tells the Press of Atlantic City he saw a shiny object sitting the mud. It turned out to be Stanton's ring, and after boiling it in peroxide and lemon juice she is wearing it again. NBC NY

Employer-sponsored insurance-premium costs for single and family coverage saw double-digit increases in New York last year, according to a new study from Manhattan-based nonprofit The Commonwealth Fund. From 2016 to 2017, average annual premium costs increased 10.5%, to $7,309, for single coverage and 10%, to $21,317, for family coverage. That compared with increases of 4.4%, to $6,368, for single coverage and 5.5%, to $18,687, for family coverage nationwide during the same period. "The cost of employer health insurance premiums and deductibles continues to outpace growth in workers' wages," said Sara Collins, lead author of the study and Commonwealth Fund vice president for health care coverage and access, in a statement. "Policies that would reduce health care burdens on employees include fixing the Affordable Care Act's family-coverage glitch, requiring employers to exclude some services from the deductible and increasing the required minimum value of emplo...

Yalkut Yosef, the halachic work based on the rulings of former Sephardic Chief Rabbi and spiritual leader of the Shas political movement Ovadia Yosef, will be "the first halachic work written in the Amharic language" for the members of the Ethiopian community. The translation was initiated by the Ministry of Religious Services and is aimed at making halachic rulings available to a wider audience,ab including Amharic-speaking Jews. The collection is comprised of 40 volumes written by Yosef's son and current Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel (Rishon LeZion) Yitzhak Yosef. The translation, covering the first portion of Yalkut Yosef, was written by Rabbi Israel Belachau under the careful supervision of the Chief Rabbi of Ethiopian Jewry, Rabbi Reuven Wobst. The Ethiopian Jewish community has over 144,000 members, approximately 25% of which belong to the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) and national-religious streams. The translation is just one of the "intense activities of th...

An Arab Gulf state will allow Israeli civilian flights to enter its airspace, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced Monday, cutting the travel time from Israel to India. Speaking at an Israeli Foreign Ministry conference on Monday, Netanyahu revealed that Israeli passenger jets will now be permitted to fly over the Gulf Arab state of Oman, on the southeastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. According to Netanyahu, the Sultan of Oman, Qaboos bin Said al Said, had given permission to Israel’s national airline, El Al, to enter his country’s airspace. “The Sultan of Oman, Qaboos, has permitted El Al flights over Oman,” said Netanyahu. Netanyahu said that the decision to permit El Al flights was part of a broader change in Israel’s position globally. “Our diplomatic map has changed dramatically, following diplomatic efforts by Israel.” The announcement comes following Netanyahu’s meeting with the Sultan during a trip to the Arab state in October. The visit was the first of its ki...

Laws aimed at getting drivers to put down their phones while they are behind the wheel have saved the lives of motorcyclists. A new study by faculty at Florida Atlantic University and the University of Miami, recently published in Social Science & Medicine, show that states with moderate to strong bans have motorcycle fatality rates that differ by as much as 11 percent compared to states with no bans. “In the case of motorcycles, these laws seem to be effective,” said study co-author Gulcin Gumus, Ph.D., an associate professor in health administration in the Department of Management Programs at FAU’s College of Business. “While it’s not clear that these laws have had an impact on reducing the overall number of traffic fatalities, when we focus specifically on motorcycles, we find that these laws are having a major impact in reducing deaths among motorcycle riders. ” The study’s authors obtained annual data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System on total and motorcycle-spec...

Republican tensions over a President Trump-backed criminal justice reform bill are spilling into public view as lawmakers run out of time to finish work on the legislation. Supporters of the legislation believe they have momentum, pointing to the growing number of senators who have come out in support of the bill. On Friday, Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) both announced they were backing it. Separately, Trump doubled down on his demand for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to schedule a vote. “Hopefully Mitch McConnell will ask for a VOTE on Criminal Justice Reform. It is extremely popular and has strong bipartisan support. It will also help a lot of people, save taxpayer dollars, and keep our communities safe. Go for it Mitch!,” Trump tweeted Friday. Despite those entreaties, McConnell has hinted the legislation will have to wait because of division within the Republican conference over its merits, as well as the ticking clock. McConnell, speaking...

If you look it up in Wikipedia, you may get the impression that it was either the Dutch settlers in early New York or a guy name Hanson Gregory (1847) who invented the doughnut. However, doughnuts – or pieces of dough fried in oil (even those with holes in them) – predated Dutch olykoeks by many thousands of years. Archaeological remains at many of the Pharaohs’ tombs depict the different types of bread made in ancient Egypt, which included ring-shaped bread. To keep breads out of reach of pests and rodents, they were ring shaped and threaded on a pole or stick, which was hung far above floor level. It was this ubiquitous bread “staff” which is the origin of the term “staff of life.” We know for a fact that in biblical times, even as far back as the Exodus, breads or pieces (even rings) of dough were being fried in oil. Tomes have been written documenting such breads. For example, in the Talmud an entire tractate (Menahot) is dedicated to the subject, and describes in great detail t...