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Daily Briefing

Monday, November 15, 2010

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Today's Daily Briefing Sponsored by: You! For only $180, you can use this prominent spot to announce an honor or celebrate a milestone. To make your announcement, click here. Featured Story As Feingold exits, Senate loses a principled liberal The speech that Russ Feingold gave to end his career in the U.S. Senate was much like the Wisconsin pol's career itself -- by turns crystal clear, obscure, ornery, defiant and gracious. Read more » Editors' Picks Glenn Beck and the limits of Soros-bashing Glenn Beck took aim at George Soros over three days last week but so far -- at least within the Jewish community -- the barrage appears to be backfiring, Ami Eden writes on JTA's Telegraph blog. Jewish farming in Denver: The video JTA's Wandering Jew visits Ekar Farm in Denver, which in its just-completed first season grew 8,000 pounds of food for the local Jewish food pantry. Watch the video. Together in rest A Massachusetts Jewish cemetery's expansion reflects more acceptance of interfaith families and their desire to share a traditional burial, the Boston Globe reports. Chewing with Chomsky It seems safe to say that no living intellectual has enraged more people with more predictable regularity than Noam Chomsky, especially regarding his harsh criticisms of U.S. and Israeli policies in the Middle East. Tablet tries to get inside his head. Praying for rain Rabbis, imams and priests put aside their differences and gathered in a valley near Jerusalem to pray for something they all need -- rain. The Jerusalem Post has a video of the event. Desert queens Three dozen Jewish Israeli and American women discovered their girl power during a weeklong journey into the Negev and learned that they have more in common than not. A Ynet reporter joined the women. Pigskins in Jerusalem American football in Israel makes for strange bedfellows, CNN's Kevin Flower reports. Breaking News Vice President Joe Biden, Jerry Seinfeld and Bette Midler headlined a festive opening weekend for the new National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. Two rabbis in western New York have pulled out of a Muslim-Jewish outreach effort, charging that the national sponsor is involved in Islamic fundamentalism. American intelligence officials created a "safe haven" for Nazis in the United States after World War II, a secret U.S. Justice Department report said. In the aftermath of the discovery of a $42.5 million fraud at the Claims Conference, a group of Holocaust survivors has called for the appointment of an ombudsman. Personal property of disgraced Jewish financier Bernard Madoff was sold at an auction that raised more than $2 million to repay victims of his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. A joint congressional letter raising concerns and asking questions about a proposed $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia was delivered to Obama administration officials. Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli and her boyfriend, popular American actor Leonardo DiCaprio, arrived in Israel for a vacation. Three schools, including two affiliated with Chabad, reportedly were disqualified from a national online contest. The makers of a new Canadian reality TV show have apologized for an online trailer in which one of the program's characters says she hates Jews. Swastikas were spray-painted on the walls of a Jewish youth center in Santiago, Chile. The head of state-owned French railway company SNCF made an unprecedented show of regret for the company's responsibility in sending some 76,000 Jews in France to Nazi death camps. A senior White House official told Jewish organizational leaders that President Obama did not intend to make a public issue of Israel's latest housing start in eastern Jerusalem. German Jewish leaders and pro-Israel groups applauded a German parliamentary motion demanding that Hamas release captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. San Francisco residents could get a chance to vote on banning brit milah if a proposed measure gets on next November's ballot. The Lord's Prayer, widely considered to undergird the foundation of Christianity, "is utterly, totally, fully Jewish -- there's nothing in it that is particularly Christian," a theological expert said. An anonymous donor has offered to give $20 million to a leading Modern Orthodox synagogue in New York City that had halted construction on a new building due to financial problems. Dozens of Israeli movie and TV figures joined the boycott of a new theater in a Jewish West Bank city of Ariel. Rabbi Eliyahu Birnbaum was formally installed as the new chief rabbi of the Italian city of Turin, ending years of tension. Israel's Cabinet approved a plan to bring about 8,000 more Ethiopians to Israel over the next four years. Ariel Sharon was returned to a Tel Aviv hospital after spending a weekend at his ranch for the first time since he fell into a coma in January 2006. Benjamin Netanyahu said he'd present to his Cabinet an expected U.S. offer of incentives to freeze Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank.