Britannia Radio

Daily Briefing

Thursday, March 1, 2012

FEATURED STORY New Jerseyan hopes to sled for Israel at Olympics He's not Israeli. In fact, he's only visited the country once. But Bradley Chalupski hopes to represent the Jewish state in the obscure sport of skeleton at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Read more » EDITORS' PICKS At AIPAC conference, expect lots of Iran talk The country's largest and most influential pro-Israel gathering begins this weekend in Washington and is expecting record-setting crowds upwards of 10,000. JTA's Ron Kampeas reports there will be lots of talk about Iran -- both onstage and behind the curtain. Reform stand up for Orthodox The controversy over an Orthodox basketball team's decision to forfeit a semifinal game rather than violate Shabbat has inspired a cross-denominational show of Jewish unity. The Reform movement's new president urged a Texas parochial school group to modify its schedule to accommodate the Robert Beren Academy in Houston. Read Rick Jacobs' letter on JTA's Telegraph blog. Apartheid Week at Brandeis (Forward) The anti-Israel protest movement known as Israeli Apartheid Week added a new campus to its roster this year: a university with Jewish roots outside Boston. Israel's last chance (New York Times) An Israeli pilot who participated in the 1981 strike on an Iraqi nuclear reactor writes that if Israel is going to give diplomacy and sanctions more time to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions, it will be because it trusts the United States to strike down the road if they fail. They got Gandhi, too! (Chakra News) The controversy over Mormon proxy baptisms continues with news that the late Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, assassinated in 1948, was baptized in Salt Lake City in 1996. Needless to say, the Hindus are none too pleased. Congressman in an unkosher pickle (Times of Israel) Rep. David Camp is being dragged into a messy and awkward battle between an estranged wife and her husband -- an employee of the congressman -- who refuses to give her a religious writ of divorce. Ritual immersion (Huffington Post) At a progressive kibbutz in northern Israel, ancient mikvah rituals are being reinterpreted with the introduction of plaster casts made of the bellies of expectant mothers. In a word (Boston Globe) How a Yiddish expression used to refer to the bleating of goats became the emblematic expression of 2012. BREAKING NEWS Egypt has lifted a travel ban on American NGO workers who are charged with using foreign funds to incite violence in the country. Andrew Breitbart, a conservative Internet publisher who was the first to show an explicit photo that former Rep. Andrew Weiner sent from his Twitter account, has died. The Jewish Federations of North America is urging Pope Benedict XVI to seek the release of Alan Gross during the pope’s upcoming visit to Cuba. Severe weather in Israel has caused damage and blackouts. A candidate from Illinois for the U.S. House of Representatives called the Holocaust “nothing more than an international extortion racket by the Jews.” The Emergency Committee for Israel in a New York Times ad called on Jewish charitable foundations to stop funneling money to two liberal groups known for their Israel criticism. Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, will be a keynote speaker at the annual J Street conference. A Texas school association voted a second time not to reschedule a state boys' basketball tournament semifinal game that would have allowed a Jewish day school, the Robert M. Beren Academy of Houston, to participate. Hundreds gathered in the West Bank community of Itamar to mark the first yahrzeit for the five slain members of the Fogel family. British peer Jenny Tonge resigned as party whip of the Liberal Democrats after saying that Israel would not survive for long in its present form.