World Roundup 30/10/2014: French Jews learn Krav Maga to battle anti-Semitism
World Roundup 30/10/2014
Country: France
Dozens of French Jews are turning to Israel to learn the martial art Krav Maga amid rising levels of anti-Semitism in their country. The programme in Netanya, run by Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s youth agency, is specifically for French Jewish teenagers and combines Zionism studies and visits to West Bank sites.
Country: United States
A Philadelphia woman has made history after being inaugurated as the first female president of the Jewish Reconstructionist Movement and Seminary. Rabbi Deborah Waxman now heads more than 100 congregations. Reconstructionist Jews believe each generation must ‘reconstruct’ Judaism to maintain relevance.
Country: Spain
The second biggest political party in Spain has announced a new motion to recognise Palestinian statehood. The Socialist Party, with a third of all Spanish Congress seats, will call for recognition on 30 October – the anniversary of the Madrid Talks, which paved the way for the Oslo Accords over 20 years ago.
Country: Nepal
Two more Israelis died in Nepal on Friday after a bus drove off a steep mountainside, plunging 50 metres and killing 11 people. Six Israeli hikers have now been killed in the country in the past two weeks, after a deadly snowstorm claimed dozens of lives along the Annapurna Circuit a fortnight ago.
Country: Denmark
Denmark’s national health authority has said it does not think non-medical male circumcision (brit milah) is risky enough to justify a ban, after a left-wing parliamentary alliance suggested otherwise. It comes as a relief to European Jewish groups, who say Denmark is the next battleground for safeguarding the practice.
Country: Russia
One of Moscow’s largest Jewish community centres has been renamed in honour of the late Jewish leader Ralph Goldman, who spearheaded covert US Jewish aid to Soviet Jews behind the Iron Curtain. The Nikitskaya was rededicated last week after Goldman died in Jerusalem earlier this month, aged 100.
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