Brooklyn, NY - A billboard hyping the teen drama “90210” has some members of Williamsburg’s Hasidic Jews all worked up. The ad, which is visible from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, depicts a handful of swimsuit-clad actors and actresses lounging in a pool — starkly violating the Hasidic interpretation of at least two Jewish laws, neighborhood leaders say. “In Jewish law, it is...

Poway, CA - For the second time in four months, the Ner Tamid Synagogue on Pomerado Road near Meadowbrook Lane was spray-painted with hate messages. A sheriff's deputy driving by the temple, found a swastika and the number 14 spray-painted in blue on the front of the temple, said sheriff's Sgt. Jason Rothlein of the Poway substation. The last incident occurred in May, when white-supremacist...

Jerusalem - Naftaili Sheetrit, a 14-year-old boy seriously wounded in the terror attack at Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav yeshiva, will return to the yeshiva this week after a long absence. The next few months will mark yet another struggle for Naftali as he attempts to return to his normal life. “I have a lot of schoolwork to make-up," he said. "I hope that I will succeed in my tests and I am...

New Orleans, LA - President Bush warned residents of the Gulf Coast on Sunday that a serious storm was headed their way, echoing the sentiments of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who reiterated his demands that city residents evacuate. Meanwhile, a federally supported computer projection says Hurricane Gustav could cause up to $29.3 billion in property damage when it hits the Gulf Coast. The...

Gaza - "Hello, I'm calling from Gaza. I want some of your time. We are supporting Barack Obama…" For the past seven months, a group of 24 students and young professionals have gathered in the Gaza Strip nightly to phone random telephone numbers in the United States, urging the voices at the other end to "vote for Barack Obama." Although only American citizens can actually cast a ballot in...

Chicago, IL - Now that Senator Obama is the official presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, tight security has been beefed up around his South Side home. Obama's popularity draws visitors to the area around his home on Hyde Park. It is a quiet neighborhood, but it became a historic area containing the home of the nation's first African-American presidential nominee. Secret Service...

Williamsburg, NY - This story was Reprinted with permission from Mishpacha magazine as Rabbi Mordechai Kamentzky describes his spur-of-the-moment shivah call to the grieving family of Yaakov Neuman, a”h, the small boy who fell down an elevator shaft in Williamsburg I never intended to go. And I was surely not prepared for the experience. I was in the office of the yeshivah when I received a...

Winnipeg, Canada - A Jewish human rights organization says it is being unfairly targeted in a discrimination complaint that it can’t possibly defend. Legal counsel for B’nai Brith Canada said the organization has been dogged by a four-year-old complaint to the Manitoba Human Rights Commission where specifics of the alleged wrongdoing have not been spelled out and the complainant never...

Borough Park, NY - Detectives fear a serial sex predator is stalking Borough Park, and are frustrated by the lack of cooperation they're getting from one victim's family, The Post has learned. The Hasidic family of a 14-year-old girl sexually assaulted on Aug. 3 is not helping detectives hunting her attacker, according to a police source familiar with the investigation. "The detectives have...

Alaska- In light of recent media reports attempting to connect Republican VP nominee Gov. Sarah Palin with controversial historian and Nazi sympathizer Pat Buchanan, VIN News has learned that the Alaska governor has demonstrated strong support for Alaska's Jewish community. In particular, Gov. Palin signed a resolution in June of 2008 recognizing Israel's 60th anniversary and the unique...

London - Leading academics, authors and scientists are launching a campaign to stop state-funded faith schools from discriminating against students and teachers on the grounds of religion. From Monday, such schools will be allowed to include faith as a selection criterion for teaching and non-teaching posts, reserving more places for people from the same religious background. In some schools...

Borough Park, NY - Friday morning residents in the neighborhood of 42 Street between 10 Avenue and FT Hamilton Pkwy where shocked when they found hateful remarks and swastikas painted on Simcha Felder's campaign posters. The 66 PCT responded and gave it over to the Hate Crime Division and they are investigating the incident. ...

New York, NY - New York City is addressing residents' complaints about salt from the waterfalls exhibition by cutting in half the hours per week they flow. Four waterfalls built as an art spectacle on Manhattan's East River became the subject of an eco-uproar for the damage their mist is doing to the waterfront greenery. Some New Yorkers want the falls to be shut off after Labor Day, not on...

New Orleans, LA - New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city beginning 8 a.m. Sunday but urged residents to consider escaping "the mother of all storms" before then. "You need to be scared," Nagin said of the Category 4 hurricane tearing along Cuba's western coast. "You need to be concerned, and you need to get your butts moving out of New Orleans right now. This is...

Williamsburg, NY - The New York City Housing Authority has hired ReedSmith L.L.P., one of the nation's largest law firms, to represent it in the Brooklyn district attorney's inquiry into the death of a 5-year-old boy who fell down an elevator shaft in a public housing complex last week. The accident has put renewed scrutiny on the Housing Authority over the safety and maintenance of its 3,337...