Some 1,000 medical personnel at the Rambam Healthcare Campus in Haifa are on the front lines of the war against the coronavirus, and they now have a new tool at their disposal: A management and control system developed by Israel’s Elbit Systems defense company. EX-TEAMS is derived from milit…

Over the past month, virtual programming and video conferencing have replaced in-person classroom learning and public events. Frustrations with lack of equipment and technical difficulties were foreseeable, but a much uglier problem has emerged to become part of the new normal: Zoom bombing.

Spain’s ambassador to the United States and the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain discussed the challenges of, and response to, the coronavirus outbreak in that country in an online briefing sponsored by the American Jewish Committee.

In Israel, the days leading up to Passover are usually the most bustling time of the year in local supermarkets, with shoppers stocking up on kosher-for-Passover products ahead of the week-long holiday. However, the coronavirus pandemic has changed the way many Israeli families are doing the…

Representatives from several international Jewish communities gathered online on Wednesday to discuss how the Jews in their respective countries are faring with the COVID-19 outbreak, as well as what challenges and concerns they face going forward.Participants on the call, which was sponsore…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mossad intelligence agency chief Yossi Cohen, National Security Council head Meir Ben-Shabbat, Health Ministry director general Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, head of Public Health Services Sigal Sadetsky and head of Hadassah-University Medical Center profess…

Leaders of six major Orthodox organizations released a joint statement on Monday asking Jews to limit preparations for Passover to only essentials as a further measure against the health threat presented by the coronavirus.

With the coronavirus pandemic pushing meetings to go virtual, anti-Semites have taken the opportunity to disrupt them on the video conferencing platform Zoom, according to a report on Sunday from the Anti-Defamation League.

With the coronavirus pandemic isolating thousands of at-risk Israelis in their homes, United Hatzalah — the independent, nonprofit Emergency Medical Service (EMS) organization — opened a “humanitarian emergency center” on March 25 to help coordinate and deliver food packages to elderly citiz…

Less than 20 kilometers south of Jerusalem in the Gush Etzion bloc, the community of Efrat and its 13,000 inhabitants made headlines this week as having one of the highest levels of coronavirus-infected residents percentage-wise in the country.According to Efrat Mayor Oded Revivi in a conver…

Given the anticipated shortages of hospital staff able to treat those infected with the coronavirus, the Israeli Ministry of Health has asked nursing schools across the country to train their students in respiratory care.

American Jewish Committee has canceled its annual global forum due to the coronavirus pandemic, announced the organization on Thursday.

Israeli universities and institutes — and their affiliated academics, researchers, doctors, scientists and students — are leading the fight against the coronavirus. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Technion‒Israel Institute of Technology, Rambam Health Care Campus, Migal Galilee Resea…

The number of Israeli coronavirus fatalities rose to five on Wednesday, according to Israel’s Health Ministry, and 2,030 Israelis have so far been diagnosed with the COVID-19 virus. The two latest fatalities were announced on Wednesday morning. It is unclear if the victims had underlying med…

While a number of Jewish organizations are focused on helping the elderly in Israel, who are at a higher risk of getting extremely sick from the coronavirus, not get infected with it, the older population is struggling with the country’s ordered self-quarantine and social distancing.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday night that his Likud Party and rival Blue and White Party had reached agreement on the outlines of a national unity government, and called on Blue and White leader Benny Gantz to sign the deal, saying “millions of Israelis are waitin…

Researchers at Israel’s Technion–Israel Institute of Technology and Rambam Health Care Campus have successfully tested a new method, called “pooling,” that they claim will dramatically increase the country’s ability to test for COVID-19. Because the method enables simultaneous testing of doz…

Los Angeles Jewish community leaders announced in a March 17 statement that they are launching an initiative to provide aid to those most at risk from the coronavirus pandemic.

The first few weeks after making aliyah are typically a flurry of activity, with the newly minted Israeli dashing from government offices to banks to setting up utilities to schools to register the kids, not to mention finding a terrific falafel stand.

Jewish organization Reconectar applauded the recent passing of a law in the Portuguese Parliament that established March 31 as the official date to commemorate victims of the Inquisition.Ashley Perry (Perez), president of Reconectar, which seeks to reconnect the descendants of Spanish and Po…

Amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis in Italy, which has brought the country to a virtual standstill, prominent Jewish organizations continue to engage the Jewish community in the country.

Following ongoing situation evaluations and consultations with the Ministry of Health, the Israeli defense establishment has stepped up preparations in relation to the threat of the coronavirus in recent days.On Tuesday, the military called up approximately 70 reservists to assist in the pre…

With no clear path towards a government coalition for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the third round of elections on March 2, Israel’s political scene has entered a state of chaos that could produce an unlikely alliance of parties seeking to oust the longtime leader.

Thirteen new cases of coronavirus were reported by Israel’s Health Ministry on Sunday, bringing the total number of Israelis infected with COVID-19 to 39.

Israel’s Health Ministry on Wednesday greatly expanded its measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus, adding arrivals from France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Austria to its quarantine list. Under the new directives, tens of thousands of Israelis will now be required to self-quar…

You may not find it surprising that Mordechai and Esther are the most popular in our (wildly unscientific) JNS “Favorite Purim Person” poll.After all, Esther was a young orphan girl living in Shushan, the capital city of Persia, minding her own business when her uncle informed her that she w…

When New York cardiologist, Dr. Aaron Gindea read the entire Torah portion of Beshalach at the Kibo Hut on Mount Kilimanjaro, he may have broken the record for reading from a Torah scroll at the highest recorded altitude—4,700 meters (15420 feet). But Gindea did not come to Tanzania to break…

Rona Kaufman had never been to an AIPAC Policy Conference. But for the Duquesne University School of Law professor from Pennsylvania, this was an important year to travel to the nation’s capital and be among 18,000 supporters of the pro-Israel lobbying group.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference in a video address on Sunday that he will always support Israel, but also believes in a two-state solution for the Palestinians.

Several Jewish and other ethnic minority organizations are urging California’s leaders to reconsider narrowing the state’s proposed ethnic-studies curriculum, which focuses solely on “people of color” at the expense of other minority groups in the state. The new course of study has generated…

Anti-Semitic and anti-Israel prejudices are widespread throughout Europe, with almost one in four Europeans equating Israelis to Nazis and one in five believing Jews exploit the Holocaust for their own benefit, according to a recent survey.

At least 180 Israeli students have been put in isolation after coming in contact with a group of South Korean tourists who tested positive for Covid-19, the disease spread by the SARS-Cov-2 virus (aka “coronavirus”) after returning from a trip to the Holy Land, as the Jewish state begins to …

The University of California San Diego has announced a gift of more than $1.3 million from the Koret Foundation to support joint research on marine archaeology between UC San Diego’s Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology (SCMA) and the University of Haifa’s Leon Recanati Institute for Mariti…

More than 23,000 people, including 2,500 in person and several thousand online, from 183 countries gathered for OurCrowd’s 2020 global investor summit on Feb. 13 in Jerusalem.

“Happy are those who dwell in Your house.” — Psalm 84

As the death toll and emergency measures increase daily, Jewish communities in cities across China joined the population at large in the struggle to protect themselves against the new deadly coronavirus and cope with the extreme precautions being taken to guard against the spread of the flu-…

Naama Issachar, an Israeli-American woman who has been imprisoned in Russia on drug charges since April, was released from prison on Thursday, the Russian prison service said in a statement.

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed on Monday the Never Again Education Act, a bill that seeks to expand Holocaust education in the United States.

Less than half of Americans, some 45 percent,  know that 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust, while 29 percent weren’t sure or had no answer, according to a Pew Research Center study released on Wednesday ahead of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration and…

Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin and the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum are hosting the Fifth World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem on Thursday. This year’s event, titled, “Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism,” commemorates 75 years since the 1945 liberation of the Auschw…

In a move to foster academic exchange between Israeli and American universities, 28 professors from universities and colleges across the United States recently traveled to Israel for Jewish National Fund‒USA’s (JNF) Faculty Fellowship Program.

Israeli Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein announced on Sunday that the Knesset plenum will debate next week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for immunity from prosecution in the three criminal cases facing him.

Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo announced on Sunday that it will donate burn creams, milk replacers, wound sprays and hydration concentrates to aid animals in Victoria, Australia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday appointed several Knesset members to ministerial posts after having resigned from his own ministerial posts following a petition to the Supreme Court.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) notified StandWithUs (SWU) on Friday that it has accepted its complaint alleging that UCLA violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and has opened the matter for full investigation on the merits.