JIMENA International News

BY KARMEL MELAMED | MAR 20, 2019.
JEWISH JOURNAL Iranian Jewish community leaders in the U.S. have confirmed reports that on Feb. 28 three antique Torah scrolls were stolen by unknown thieves from the centuries-old Ezra Yagoub synagogue located inside Tehran’s Jewish ghetto. While the Iranian regime has not launched any official investigation into the incident and state-run media outlets have not reported on it, a statement released by the Los Angeles-based Iranian American Jewish Federation(IAJF) indicated that their organization is unaware of any specific motive behind the theft of the Torahs. “The Iranian American Jewish Federation is deeply concerned
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Everyone knows the name David Ben-Gurion. Why don’t we know about the spy Jamil Cohen?
By Matti Friedman, New York Times Mr. Friedman is the author of “Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel.” JERUSALEM — Late on the night of Nov. 11, Hamas soldiers in southern Gaza stopped a van near the town of Khan Yunis. Inside were a group of Arabic-speaking men and women who said they were aid workers. The soldiers were suspicious. When the passengers understood that they couldn’t talk their way out, they dropped the pretense and drew guns. In the
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By ANNA M. KAPLAN FEB 21, 2019 | 5:00 AM
I can still remember sitting with my family in our home in Tehran, watching his arrival on our small TV. After a year marked by constant unrest, demonstrations in the streets, and riots ending with gunfire and bloodshed, Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran after 14 years in exile, greeted by millions of supporters who had shown up to welcome him at the airport in Tehran. I was just 13 years old at the time, and while I realized the significance of the events taking place, I don't think I could have fully realized
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In the state of Israel’s early years, a number of parents in immigrant transit camps were told that their babies had died. Their families believe the babies were abducted by the Israeli authorities in the 1950s, and were illegally put up for adoption to childless Ashkenazi families, Jews of European descent. A younger generation is demanding answers. Photographs and Text by Malin Fezehai For New York Times ROSH HAAYIN, Israel — Ofra Mazor, 62, had been looking for her sister, Varda, for 30 years when she submitted her DNA samples to the Israeli genealogy company MyHeritagein 2017. Her mother, Yochevet, who is now deceased, said
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Syracuse University is being urged to cease granting college credits to students who intern with an activist group that promotes the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign. The Syracuse Peace Council (SPC) is listed as one of 14 “internship sites” available to students majoring in Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition, each of which offers three credits and a letter grade. By Shiri Moshe, the Algemeiner The calls come in the wake of a gathering hosted by the SPC’s Justice for Palestine Committee on January 22 at ArtRage Gallery in Syracuse, which was attended by more than two dozen people, among them Campus
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Magda Haroun, the leader of the four-member Jewish community of Cairo, was in the US for a conference at the end of January. There she found time to answer questions from Viviane Levy at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.Later, she made a fundraising appeal at the University of Pennsylvania.  See comments below by Levana Zamir, head of the organisations representing Jews from Arab countries in Israel. From Point of No Return. Magda was with her colleague, Sammy Ibrahim, of the Association of the Drop of Milk, and Professor Yoram Meital, who is on a sabbatical at the
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GILA GAMLIEL 
ON 2/10/19 AT 2:40 PM I am a daughter of a lost civilization.  My mother was born in Libya, and my father is from Yemen. Most of the world knows the history of the Jews of Europe, which culminated in the Holocaust, where one-third of the world's Jewish population was wiped out. But less known or spoken about is the other half of world Jewry, which came from North Africa, the Middle East, and Iran. These were the world's oldest Jewish communities outside of Israel—some, like the communities in Iraq and Yemen, dating back thousands of years. This may
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BY AARON BANDLER | FEB 5, 2019 | COVER STORY On Feb. 5, President Donald Trump’s administration announced that it had filled the two-year vacant position of Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. The appointee is Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Elan Carr, who is Jewish. The 50-year-old former GOP congressional candidate and Iraq War veteran has spent most of his career prosecuting criminal and terrorist suspects. In his role as deputy district attorney, a position he has held since 2005, Carr’s work also has focused on prosecuting hate crimes as well as cases of domestic violence, sexual assault and
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A coalition of Sephardi and Mizrahi groups — Jews who came from the Middle East and Africa — condemned a recent statement by the anti-Israel group, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), saying that it expressed “racist exclusion,” in a statement released Wednesday.
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By Sarah Levin, JNS (January 22, 2019 / JNS) Like so many other Jewish women, I grappled over and over again with the decision to attend the Women’s March on Jan. 19. I missed the first march because I was recovering from childbirth, and was overcome with exhaustion and uncertainties about how I was going manage motherhood and my very full-time work at JIMENA. Since the initial march, I’ve yearned to be a part of a women’s movement that initially filled me with radical hope. This hope began to seriously wane for me last May when I happened to be
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