So long, 5776: Recapping year’s highs and lows

Here’s a timeline of some of the major Jews news stories of 5776.

September 2015

•Fifty-three major American Jewish groups issue a call for unity and recommitment to American and Israeli security following the Sept. 17 deadline for Congress to reject the Iran nuclear deal. Overall, 19 of 28 Jewish members of Congress support the deal, which is vigorously opposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

•After an 119-8 General Assembly vote permitting the Palestinian flag to be raised at U.N. headquarters in New York, the flag flies there for the first time. Israel, the United States, Canada and Australia are among the dissenters.

October 2015

•The Jewish Council for Public Affairs calls on Jewish groups to lobby for official American recognition of the Armenian genocide. Though most historians say the killing or deportation of 1.5 million Armenians by Turkish forces during World War I constitutes a genocide, many American Jewish groups — including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee —had previously declined to do so for fear of harming Israel’s alliance with Turkey.

•An Israeli couple is killed while driving with four of their six children. Eitam and Naama Henkin, both in their 30s, are killed while returning to their home in Neria. Their children are unharmed. In June, four Palestinians are sentenced to life in prison for the killings.

•Pope Francis meets Jewish leaders in Rome to mark the 50th anniversary of the Nostra Aetate, the landmark declaration that rejected collective Jewish guilt for the killing of the founder of Christianity and paved the way for improved Jewish-Catholic relations.

•Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu draws fire for claiming that at a 1941 meeting, the mufti of Jerusalem gave Hitler the idea to exterminate the Jews. “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time; he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here’,” Netanyahu said. Amid an outcry, Netanyahu modifies his statement, emphasizing Hitler’s responsibility for the Holocaust.

•Palestinian rioters set fire to Joseph’s Tomb amid continuing Israeli-Palestinian unrest.

•Portuguese officials approve the naturalization of a Panamanian descendant of Sephardic Jews, the first person to receive Portuguese citizenship under a 2013 law that entitled such individuals to repatriation. Days earlier, Spain approved the granting of citizenship to 4,302 descendants of Spanish Jews exiled during the Spanish Inquisition under a similar law.

November 2015

•Jonathan Pollard, the former American Naval intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel, is freed from federal prison after 30 years. Under the terms of his parole, Pollard is prohibited from traveling to Israel, though he offers to renounce his American citizenship in order to live there.

•Two Jewish teens are found guilty of the murder of Mohammad Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian teenager who was abducted and burned to death in the Jerusalem Forest in 2014.

•American “gap year” yeshiva student Ezra Schwartz, 18, is killed by a Palestinian terrorist while stuck in traffic enroute to visiting Oz Vegaon, the park set up in Gush Etzion in memory of the three Jewish teens kidnapped an killed by Hamas. 

•F. Glenn Miller Jr., the white supremacist found guilty of killing three people at two suburban Kansas City Jewish institutions, is sentenced to death.

•The European Union approves guidelines for the labeling of products from the Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.

•The Anti-Defamation League reports a 30 percent jump in anti-Israel activity on American college campuses.

•The Rabbinical Council of America adopts a policy prohibiting the ordination or hiring of women rabbis. The policy proscribes the usage of any title implying rabbinic status, specifically naming “maharat” – an acronym meaning “female spiritual, legal and Torah leader” used by Yeshivat Maharat, a New York school ordaining Orthodox women as clergy.

•Six men are sentenced for their roles in a plot to violently coerce a man to grant his wife a religious divorce; most are given prison terms. In December, two rabbis involved in the scheme are sentenced to jail time.

December 2015

•Israel arrests several suspects in connection with a July firebombing in Duma that killed three members of a Palestinian family, including an 18-month-old baby. Weeks later, video emerges showing friends of the suspects celebrating the killings at a wedding in Jerusalem, drawing condemnations from across the political spectrum.

•The United Nations recognizes Yom Kippur as an official holiday. Starting in 2016, no official meetings will take place on the Jewish Day of Atonement at the international body’s New York headquarters, and Jewish employees there will be able to miss work without using vacation hours. Other religious holidays that enjoy the same status are Christmas, Good Friday, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

•An Orthodox group which claims to be able to eliminate homosexual urges was found by New Jersey’s Superior Court to be in violation of the state’s Consumer Fraud Act and ordered to cease operations.

•Violinist Itzhak Perlman is named the third recipient of the Genesis Prize, an annual $1 million award dubbed the “Jewish Nobel.”

•Brazil refuses to confirm Dani Dayan, a former leader of the Yesha Council in Judea and Samaria, as Israeli ambassador to the country. Following a months-long standoff, Dayan, a native of Argentina, is reassigned as consul general in New York.

January 2016

•In response to unspecified complaints that products produced in the Judea and Samaria are mislabeled as originating in Israel, the U.S. customs agency reiterates its policy that any goods originating in Judea and Samaria or the Gaza Strip be labeled as such.

•After decades of squabbling, the Israeli government approves a compromise to expand the non-Orthodox Jewish prayer section of the Western Wall. Under terms of the deal, the size of the non-Orthodox section of the Western Wall will double to nearly 10,000 square feet and both areas will be accessible by a single entrance.

•The Cleveland Cavaliers fire Israeli-American head coach David Blatt, who led the team to the NBA Finals in 2015. Blatt releases a statement saying he was “grateful” for the chance to serve as coach.

•The “Open Orthodox” Mount Freedom Jewish Center in New Jersey announces it has hired a woman — Yeshivat Maharat graduate Lila Kagedan — using the title “rabbi.”

February 2016

•The Hungarian Holocaust drama “Son of Saul” wins an Oscar for best foreign language film.

•The Canadian Parliament condemns the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, saying it “promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel.” Passed by a vote of 229-51, the motion was introduced by the opposition Conservative Party but won support from the ruling Liberal Party as well.

March 2016

•Venice launches a yearlong commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the world’s first official Jewish ghetto. Among the many events scheduled for the anniversary is an appearance by Jewish U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who presides over a mock trial of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender character from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.”

•Microsoft pulls its artificial intelligence tweeting robot after it posts several anti-Semitic comments.

•A Pew study of Israelis finds that 48 percent of the country’s Jews agree that Arabs should be “expelled or transferred.”

•Israeli leaders condemn the actions of a solider caught on video shooting an apparently incapacitated a Palestinian lying on the ground. “What happened today in Hebron does not represent the values of the IDF,” Prime Minister Netanyahu says following the release of the video. The soldier is charged with manslaughter in May and later goes on trial.

•Thousands of delegates attend AIPAC’s policy conference in Washington featuring appearances by most contenders for the presidency.

•Merrick Garland, the chief of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, is nominated to replace Antonin Scalia, who died in February, on the Supreme Court. In his acceptance speech, Garland emotionally recalls his grandparents who had fled anti-Semitism for better lives in the United States. Republicans vow not to consider his nomination during President Obama’s last year in office.

•Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, is the world’s richest Jew, according to Forbes, surpassing Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to claim the top spot among Jews.

April 2016

•Days ahead of the New York primary, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton engage in a heated exchange over Israel at a debate in Brooklyn, with the Vermont senator accusing the former secretary of state of neglecting the Palestinians and reiterating his charge that Israel used disproportionate force in Gaza in 2014. Clinton says she worked hard to bring peace to the region as secretary of state. Clinton won the primary, 58-42 percent.

•A majority of professors at Oberlin College sign a letter condemning the “anti-Semitic Facebook posts” by a fellow faculty member.

May 2016

•In an announcement timed to the annual independence celebrations in Israel, the nation’s Central Bureau of Statistics reports the population has risen to 8.52 million residents, a tenfold increase over the 806,000 in 1948 at the time of Israel’s founding.

•Britain’s Labour Party launches an investigation into anti-Semitism within the party one day after the suspension of former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who said Adolf Hitler was a Zionist because he advocated moving Europe’s Jews to Israel.

•Julia Ioffe, a reporter who wrote a critical profile of Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, is deluged with anti-Semitic phone calls and messages on social media, including a cartoon of a Jew being executed.

June 2016

•Rabbi Maurice Lamm, the author of “The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning” and several other notable Jewish books, dies. First issued in 1969, the book is considered a seminal work on the topic of Jewish death and mourning rituals.

•British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, already under fire over allegations of rampant anti-Semitism in his party, draws more criticism for seeming to compare Israel and the Islamic State terrorist group.

•Hallel Yaffa Ariel, 13, is stabbed to death by a Palestinian teenager while sleeping in her bed in Kiryat Arba. The attacker had jumped the community’s fence and entered the sleeping girl’s bedroom. He later is shot and killed by civilian guards.

•Israel and Turkey sign a reconciliation agreement six years after relations were cut off following an Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship attempting to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

•Anti-Semitic incidents on American college campuses nearly doubled in 2015, the Anti-Defamation League reports.

July 2016

•Pope Francis visits Auschwitz, where he prays in silent contemplation and meets with Holocaust survivors.

•Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, author, activist and Holocaust survivor, dies at 87. Wiesel, who wrote “Night” and “The Jews of Silence,” was well-known internationally for his books and as a leading voice of conscience.

•Israel’s highest rabbinical court rejects a conversion performed by a prominent American rabbi, Haskel Lookstein o the Upper East Side’s Kehilath Jeshurun, a modern Orthodox shul. He also performed the conversion of Ivanka Trump, daughter of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

August 2016

•Esther Jungreis, a pioneer in the Jewish outreach movement and founder of the organization Hineni, dies at 80.

•American gymnast Aly Raisman wins three medals at the Rio Olympics, a gold for the overall U.S. women’s team and two individual silvers. Israel takes home two medals at the games, both bronze in judo, while American Jewish swimmer Anthony Ervin at 35 becomes the oldest person to win a gold medal in an individual swimming event. The Rio games also pay tribute to the 11 Israelis killed at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

•Fyvush Finkel, an Emmy Award-winning actor who began his career performing in the Yiddish theater, dies at 93.

•The Movement for Black Lives adopts a platform describing Israel as an “apartheid state” and claims it perpetrates “genocide” against the Palestinian people. The group, a coalition of 50 organizations that emerged from the Black Lives Matter movement, is harshly criticized by Jewish organizations.

•Gene Wilder, a comedic actor who played the title characters in the films “Young Frankenstein” and “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” and also starred in the Mel Brooks’ Western spoof “Blazing Saddles,” dies at 83.

September 2016

•Former Israeli President Shimon Peres, 93, suffers a massive stroke, prompting celebrities and politicians from all over the world to offer well wishes. A week later, Peres is said to be in serious but stable condition.

•In New York for the U.N. General Assembly,  Prime Minister Netanyahu meets with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Both presidential candidates pledge close defense cooperation with Israel, but Clinton lauds the Jewish state for serving as a model for pluralism, while Trump praises its erection of a separation wall from the Palestinians.

•The Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America mandates that its member rabbis require couples to sign a prenuptial agreement ensuring that husbands will not withhold a “get,” or Jewish writ of divorce, from their wives.