JERUSALEM (JTA) — Hundreds of people gathered in front of the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem to protest government moves seen as targeting liberal streams of Judaism. The protesters who gathered in Jerusalem on Saturday night carried signs including “Judaism without coercion,” and “We are all Women of the Wall.” The demonstration was organized by…
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has flatly denied a report that it instructed diplomats to blame non-Orthodox Jews for the controversy over the Western Wall. Israeli diplomats in North America were told to blame the Reform and Conservative Jewish movements for the ongoing crisis in relations between Israel’s government and U.S. Jewry,…
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the head of the Union for Reform Judaism, suggested American Jews should use donations to Israel to push for the rights of all denominations in an interview with Times of Israel. “It’s a moment to be smart and strategic about all the money we give to Israel, and to contribute to things…
(JTA) – Israeli diplomats in North America rejected a talking point handed down to them from Jerusalem to blame Liberal Jews for the Western Wall controversy. The top diplomats refused to repeat the narrative that Jonathan Shechter, a top advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, handed down to them earlier this week in telephone…
American Jewish leaders are typically thrilled to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and equally happy to host Israeli lawmakers at home. Not this week. On Monday, an angry Steven Nasatir, president of Chicago’s Jewish federation, left Netanyahu’s office feeling angry and vowing that his community would be assembling a blacklist of those Israeli…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Three AIPAC leaders reportedly told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “we have lost the incentive to act for Israel” and of a “crisis of faith” among American Jews in the aftermath of the freezing of the Western Wall agreement. Outgoing president Lillian Pinkus, her successor, Mort Fridman, and managing director Richard Fishman…
(JTA) — Jonathan Sacks, the previous chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, said the existence of an egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall means liberal Jews were not defeated by the suspension of a plan to expand that area. Sacks, who is an Orthodox rabbi, discussed the controversy around the Western Wall at a meeting…
Siding with the government of Israel in its dispute with American Jewry over allowing egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman criticized American Jews expressing their dismay with Benjamin Netanyahu government’s stance. “Yesterday I heard something that I thought I’d never hear. I heard a major Jewish organization say that…
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