A US appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments once again on whether Americans born in Jerusalem can have "Israel" listed as their birthplace in their passports. Nathan Lewin, the lawyer who last year won a Supreme Court decision requiring lower courts to resolve the issue, this week said that new hearings will begin on March 19 in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. An array of Jewish groups had joined Lewin in pressing the courts to allow a hearing in the case of Menachem Zivotofsky, whose …More

When it comes to respecting the law, there is perhaps no man in Israel better suited to the task than Aharon Barak. Best known for his 11 years as president of the Israeli Supreme Court, Barak has held an illustrious career, filled with service that has seen some of the most politically fueled moments in the Jewish state’s history. Barak was born in Lithuania in 1936. His father was an attorney, setting in motion at an early age the path toward a law career. When the Nazis occupied his hometown of Kaunas …More

The U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal of four Holy Land Foundation organizers who were convicted on charges of conspiring to send money to Hamas. The appeal was declined Monday without explanation. The Texas-based Holy Land Foundation had its assets frozen by the Bush administration in December 2001. The Islamic charity and five defendants were found guilty in 2008 on charges of funneling money to Hamas. The four appellants, of the five convicted in 2008, were Shukri Abu Baker, sentenced to 65 years in …More

Michele Bachmann's presence at a Yom Kippur service in Chicago last week caused quite a stir. [Huffington Post] Costco issues a recall on lox. Oy vey! [Forward] Albert Einstein's "God letter" will go on auction on eBay later this month. Opening bid: $3 million. [Forward] An Iranian official mocks Benjamin Netanyahu's UN address. [Ynet] A Likud hardliner is arrested at the Temple Mount. [Times of Israel] Jordan's new ambassador to Israel was warned by his tribe not to take the job. [Times of Israel] The …More

The Egged bus company will not use images of either men or women in advertisements on its Jerusalem buses. The decision comes after controversy over featuring women in ads, Haaretz reported Monday. The Canaan Media advertising company had appeared to drop plans to place advertisements for the Yerushalmim movement on Egged buses in Jerusalem featuring photos of women and the slogans “Jerusalem women, pleased to meet you” and “Because Jerusalem belongs to all of us.” Israel's Supreme Court …More

Off a rough, paved road atop a mountain, on the thin stucco wall of a trailer home, black graffiti proclaims “Private Jewish land.” And underneath, in red, “Migron.” The trailer home is among dozens in Israel’s largest settlement outpost, deep in the central West Bank and not far from the Palestinian metropolis of Ramallah. To reach Migron, cars must exit a main highway and ascend a twisting road that barely has room for two lanes. Founded more than a decade ago, Migron remains …More

Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Jewish Labor Committee, is also the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union representing workers in the United States and Canada. When Congress declared Labor Day a public holiday in 1894, workers had more to lament than to celebrate: an economic depression, a growing concentration of corporate wealth and power, and the brutal suppression of their unions. A momentous national railroad strike to protest deep wage cuts and the summary firing of workers who …More

Last week, the Israeli Supreme Court heard arguments concerning the appeal of Anat Kamm’s four and a half year sentence for leaking classified IDF documents. Kamm filed the appeal against her sentence last October. Last year Kamm was convicted of collecting, possessing and transferring classified information to Haaretz journalist Uri Blau. She was sentenced to four and a half years of imprisonment, with an additional one and a half year suspended sentence. Anat Kamm, the former IDF OC Central Command …More

Media and analysts are already weighing in on this morning’s Supreme Court ruling to uphold President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan. As the dust settled, Jewish leaders chimed in with opinions of their own and, so far, those voices have carried a positive tone. In an in-depth Huffington Post op-ed published just an hour after the decision, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism, lauded the ruling. “For this I say again: Thank God,” he wrote, adding: …More

Five apartment buildings in the Ulpana neighborhood on the outskirts of the Beit El settlement in the West Bank will be relocated under a plan by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The five apartment buildings, home to about 30 families, would be moved several hundred yards to land that is not privately owned by Palestinians, under the plan Netanyahu presented to his Cabinet on Sunday. The plan to relocate the actual buildings, instead of razing them and rebuilding new ones, also would save the …More

Israel's Cabinet will meet in a special session to discuss legalizing the Ulpana outpost in the West Bank, despite a Supreme Court ruling calling for its demolition. The meeting will be held Friday, a day after National Union Party head Yaakov Katz and Zevulun Orlev of the HaBayit-HaYehudi (Jewish Home) Party each said that he would introduce a bill next week to retroactively authorize the apartments. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court rejected the Israeli government's request to delay the razing of the …More

Federal Courts will decide the constitutionality of a law that allows Jerusalem-born Americans to list Israel as their birthplace on a US passport, the US Supreme Court ruled Monday. In an 8-1 judgment, the court overturned a lower court ruling that claimed the judiciary could not interfere in such matters of foreign policy. The decision is a victory for the family of Jerusalem-born American Menachem Zivotofsky. Citing a 2002 law, the family demands that the State Department issue Zivotofsky a passport labeling …More