Multinational Jewish Pride on Display at Manhattan Ballroom (Tue, 21 Feb 2012)
Thousands of Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries and their supporters filled the ballroom at the New York Hilton in Midtown Manhattan for the gala banquet of the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Women Emissaries. (Photos: Rivka Lifshitz)
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Jewish Women’s Conference a Chance to Connect and Reconnect (Tue, 21 Feb 2012)
While their husbands manned the proverbial forts back home, more than 3,000 Jewish leaders from across the globe camped out in and around Brooklyn, N.Y., last week for the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Women Emissaries. (Photos: Rivka Lifshitz)
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Thousands of Jewish Women Fill N.Y. Ballroom With Song (Mon, 20 Feb 2012)
At 4:00 p.m., the Hilton New York in Midtown Manhattan was mobbed with more than 3,000 women of different ages and from locations across the globe, all of them Jewish educators, school administrators, Chabad House directors, inspirational speakers and their supporters.
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Hundreds of Teenagers Experience Jewish Life in Brooklyn (Tue, 21 Feb 2012)
Hundreds of teenagers representing a total of 54 communities stretching from Las Vegas to Vienna spent a long weekend experiencing traditional Jewish life in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y. (Photos: Bentzi Sasson)
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Thousands of Jewish Women Kick Off Annual Emissaries’ Conference (Thu, 16 Feb 2012)
Adina Landa is getting ready for a very important task. She, her husband, and their two young children are moving to a California town where they’ll seek to organize a Jewish community from scratch.
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Careful what you say in front of the pea plant (Wed, 22 Feb 2012)
An Israeli research team has discovered that plants may be listening in on the conversations around them. Professor Ariel Novoplansky and his staff at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev found that garden pea plants were able to identify and respond to signals given by nearby plants. The plants they studied were able to eavesdrop on their neighbours and send warning signals in moments of "stress". The study involved five garden pea plants, some of which were placed under tough conditions. The plants were isolated so that there could be no physical contact. "Unstressed plants are able to perceive and respond to stress cues emitted by the roots of their drought-stressed neighbors and, via 'relay cuing,' elicit stress responses in further unstressed plants," said Prof Novoplansky. "The results demonstrate the existence of a…type of networking, whereby apparent coordination might hinge on information leakiness and neighbour eavesdropping." The findings follow similar work that showed cabbages were able to communicate with each other.
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Auction offers chance to serve tea on Hitler's silver tray (Wed, 22 Feb 2012)
Hosts aiming to make an impression on their afternoon guests could soon be serving tea on a tray that once belonged to Hitler. The silver tray, given to the Nazi leader in honour of his 50th birthday in April 1939 – just a few months before the outbreak of war - goes up for auction next week. It was presented to him by Albert Speer, the Nazis' chief architect and for the final two years of the war, the man responsible for armaments in Hitler's Germany. The tray is engraved with Hitler's initials and the eagle logo associated with the Nazis appears in the centre. It was made by one of the Third Reich's top silver tableware manufacturers. The Bristol-based auction house Dreweatts said it expected the tray, which is from one of six silverware sets used on Nazi bases or in Hitler's residences, could fetch more than £2,000. Malcolm Claridge, militaria specialist for Dreweatts, said the set was owned by a private collector until now, and had probably been looted by American or British servicemen after the war. He said it was "purely a historical item", something that could be seen in most war or Holocaust museums. Asked about the possibility that collectors associated with n eo-Nazi groups could buy it, he said: "I hope it won't go to that sort of group, but it's not our business to vet people. I hope it is bought by a responsible person or a museum." Last month "ghoulish" surgical tools that were once owned by a Nazi war criminal were withdrawn from auction because of complaints.
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Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin killed in Syria (Wed, 22 Feb 2012)
Veteran journalist Marie Colvin is believed to have been killed in the Syrian city of Homs. According to Reuters, the American-born Ms Colvin and a French photographer were trapped in a house that was being shelled, but were hit in a rocket attack as they attempted to flee. A longtime foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times, Ms Colvin covered the Middle East for much of her career including as Jerusalem correspondent. She spoke at a London panel on media coverage hosted by the Masorti movement in 2002, when she argued that journalists did not go to the Middle East "with an agenda". She said during the discussion: "If senior journalists from major news organisations from across the world… all see one thing, maybe you should think further than shouting 'that can't be true' at us." In 1990 Ms Colvin presented a documentary on then-Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. "Behind the Myth" looked at his family life, his rise to become leader of the PLO and his years of international terrorism. Known for wearing an eye patch after she lost an eye to a shrapnel wound in Sri Lanka in 2001 , Ms Colvin was considered one of the most important journalists writing about conflict zones today.
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Mormons sorry for posthumous baptism of Anne Frank (Wed, 22 Feb 2012)
A week after Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel condemned the Mormon Church for adding his name to a list of those who could one day be eligible for posthumous baptism, members of the religion appear to have gone a step further and baptised Anne Frank. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has carried out the controversial practice of baptising non-members after their deaths for some 170 years. They do so in the belief it secures a place in heaven. In 1995, after it emerged that Mormons had submitted the names of hundreds of thousands of Jewish Holocaust victims to the Church's genealogical database for posthumous baptism, without regard to their religious origin, the Church agreed to stop the practice. But cases continued to occur and it took a further 15 years for the Mormon Church to agree to better monitor the database. Earlier this month, speaking to the Huffington Post, Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel hit out at the Church for continuing the "scandalous" practice after he discovered that his own name, and the names of his deceased father and maternal grandfather, had been submitted to the site. The Church was also forced to issue an apology to the family of Holocaust survivor and notorious Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who died seven years ago, because his parents were posthumously baptised in Arizona and Utah last month. The church blamed what happened on an individual member – now suspended - and said it "sincerely" regretted the "inappropriate submission". But it has now been claimed that Anne Frank, the teenage diarist who chronicled life in hiding from the Nazis but later died at Bergen Belsen, was baptised by proxy at a Mormon Church in the Dominican Republic. The information in these cases has come out in recent weeks because of the work exposing the Mormon database, carried out by former Church member Helen Radkey. An alleged screen-grab of the database, containing Anne's details, shows her status as "completed" as of last Saturday. Michael Purdy, a spokesman for the Church in the US said that it was "absolutely firm in its commitment to not accept the names of Holocaust victims for proxy baptism". "It takes a good deal of deception and manipulation to get an improper submission through the safeguards we have put in place." Mr Purdy said that the Church would consider taking disciplinary action against those who falsified submissions. Mr Wiesel has called on presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, a proud and devoted Mormon, to speak out against the practice. So far, neither Mr Romney nor his spokesman has responded.
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Tal Law on religious and IDF service 'unconstitutional' (Wed, 22 Feb 2012)
Israel's Supreme Court has ruled against an extension to a law that allows strictly Orthodox Jews to defer or limit their army service. The Tal Law, which came into effect ten years ago, was ruled unconstitutional. It had enabled Israel's full-time yeshivah students to continue their studies, and delay their national service until they were 23, at which point they could continue their studies or perform only a year of service. Israelis are conscripted into the army at the age of 18, with women usually obliged to serve two years and men three. The law will expire in August, but the Supreme Court ruled that the system should be scrapped rather than renewed in its current form. According to Ha'aretz there are about 62,000 yeshivah students who would now be eligible to begin their service this summer. The outgoing High Court President Dorit Beinisch, whose successor criticised the ruling, said: "Originally the legislation harboured the hope that the law would launch a social process that without coercion would encourage ultra-Orthodox people to serve in the military or take part in national civil service. These hopes were dashed." The Tal Law is one of many issues that highlight the divide between Israel's secular and religious. Many secular Israelis resent the fact that they cannot secure exemptions from army service in the way that religious men and women can. The ruling could destabilise the coalition between Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and its Shas partners. But Shas spokesman Yakov Betzalel dismissed concerns and said he believed a new deal could be made. Ehud Barak, now defence minister but prime minister at the time the law came into effect, acknowledged that the law "did not meet expectations, nor did it lead to the required changes ... concerning equally sharing the burden."
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