Manhattan, NY - To find the 10th man for a minyan, some rabbis on the Lower East Side have been known in recent years to step into the street and stop passers-by. Are you Jewish? they ask. It is a troubling notion for the remaining Jewish population of a neighborhood that in the 19th and early 20th centuries was the American portal for Jewish immigrants - hundreds of synagogues once thrived...

New York, NY - Some City Council members are urging the state to add two Muslim holidays to the school calendar, calling it a matter of religious freedom and fairness. But their efforts appeared headed for failure, as long as Mayor Michael Bloomberg is in control of schools and the state legislature continues to stall a bill that would make the holy days official days off. The debate on the...

Suffern, NY - Many Rockland residents walked out of a forum yesterday on the mistaken bombing of a U.S. spy ship more than 40 years ago, accusing the group holding the talk of fomenting anti-Semitism in a largely Jewish community just days before the start of the Jewish new year. More than 100 people attended the forum at the Suffern Free Library - many leaving in anger before the talk...

Jerusalem - Google Inc. has the followed the recent launch of the Hebrew version of its Gmail service with the launch of its new translation service Google Translate, which supports translations of texts to and from 30 languages including Hebrew. The program also aligns paragraphs to the left or right margins of the page depending on the direction of the language. Google Translate enables...

Basra, Iraq - Municipal authorities in the southern city of Basra have mounted a campaign to clean up the Jewish cemetery there. The cemetery is seen as one of Basra’s ‘cultural landmarks’ and the authorities want to keep it clean and tidy, said Ahmad al-Yasseri who heads the cleaning-up campaign. There are no Jews left in the city which used to house a sizeable Jewish community of...

Washington, DC - Federal officials urged Americans to get over their fear of flu vaccines - and go out and get a shot before winter arrives. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a fervent call for those who have passed on the vaccines to get one this year, when a record 143 million doses are available. One of them will go to retiree David Stern, 66, who gets his shot every...

Jerusalem - The U.S. Army's European Command deployed an early-warning radar system in Israel last week along with a 120-member support team, the weekly Defense News reported. The move marks the first permanent presence in Israel of American military personnel. The high-powered radar system is meant to augment Israel's defenses against Iranian ground-to-ground missiles. According to Defense...

Winnipeg, Canada - Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has dismissed a Winnipeg candidate who wrote that Israeli companies renting offices at the World Trade Center in 2001 vacated them beforehand because they had advance warning of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The firing was an about-face for Mr. Dion who initially resisted calls for the dismissal of Lesley Hughes, the Liberal candidate in the...

Manhattan, NY - The Intrepid, a sprawling aircraft carrier that saw heroic action in World War II and Vietnam, is on its way back to its Hudson River berth after a two-year hiatus. It's three football fields long, 66 years old and serves as home of the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, one of the city's top tourist attractions. It also displays some of the best-preserved planes of World War II...

Brooklyn, NY - AlphaPhone a New York based telephone service provider announced last week with the NY State Public Service Commission that they are exiting the telecom market by Oct 30th 2008 and that all customers local and long distance service will be automatically switched on Oct. 23, 2008 to a new telephone company called Connectel, or they can switch to the phone company of their choice. ...

Jerusalem - A quest is under way on four continents to find the missing pages of one of the world’s most important holy texts, the 1,000-year-old Hebrew Bible known as the Crown of Aleppo. Hebrew: כֶּתֶר אֲרָם צוֹבָא Crusaders held it for ransom, fire almost destroyed it and it was reputedly smuggled across Mideast borders hidden in a washing machine. But in 1958, when it...

New York, NY - First it was the cigarettes, then the doughnuts. Now, Mayor Bloomberg has your pretzels in his cross hairs. And maybe your hot dog. Or that tasty bowl of ramen noodles. "People are eating too much salt, me included," Bloomberg told a crowd of health professionals gathered at the Pierre Hotel for an awards luncheon. He had just finished touting his public health campaigns ...

New York City - Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented an environmental award to the artist who created the "Waterfalls" art installation on New York City's East River on Friday, despite criticism that its salty spray might be damaging trees and plants. The mayor gave the 2008 Doris C. Freedman Award to Danish artist Olafur Eliasson and the Public Art Fund, the organization that commissioned the...

Cortlandt Manor, NY - There have been few odder matchups in Westchester than the dude ranch here that for two decades has been the home of an Orthodox yeshiva. Teenage boys and young men spending dawn to midnight plumbing the labyrinthine arguments of the Talmud have spent nights sleeping in Western-style low-slung buildings called Dodge City and Dallas. But Yeshiva Ohr Hameir is a serious...

India - Eleven Israeli backpackers were stranded in a storm in northwestern India, and rescued in a complex mission launched by the air force. But two other Israeli backpackers were left behind – refusing to be rescued as it would constitute desecration of Shabbat. Over the weekend during a raging storm 150 tourists, 13 of them Israelis, got trapped in the remote village of Kaza, located in...