Topic: religious minorities

May 15, 2014
1:31 pm

A Druze family stands silent during a Memorial Day ceremony at the military cemetery of Ussefiya on Mount Carmel, April 2010 (photo credit: Matanya Tausig/Flash90)

From Israel’s most loyal minority, draft objectors emerge

Stop trampling our religious sensibilities and treating us like a herd, Druze activists demand, fed up with state discrimination

By Elhanan Miller

May 9, 2014
4:40 am

Singers (from left) Joachim Nahmani, Sacha Ouazana, Haim Fedida and Mony Abergel chant bakashot, a type of Sephardic religious poetry, at an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, on March 29, 2014. (photo credit: Talia Bloch/JTA)

Young Sephardic Jews embrace an old musical tradition

New classes are springing up from NY to LA with the melodic mission of bringing back ‘bakashot’

By Talia Bloch

April 6, 2014
1:26 pm

Convicted ex-MK Said Nafa (screen capture: YouTube)

Ex-Balad party MK convicted of security crimes

Druze former parliamentarian Said Nafa traveled to Syria in 2007, met with member of terror group

By Lazar Berman

April 27, 2013
3:31 am

Monastery loses 7-year court battle over Israeli security fence

Expanded West Bank barrier would surround convent on 3 sides and cut it off from most of its land, Catholic group says

March 20, 2013
12:28 am

Iranian Jews eligible to immigrate to the US because of the Lautenberg Amendment arrive at Los Angeles International Airport in 2009. (Courtesy of HIAS via JTA)

Lifeline for US law that aided Soviet, now Iranian Jews

Jewish groups are among those advocating a stronger status for effort to shelter persecuted religious minorities

By Ron Kampeas

January 16, 2013
10:53 pm

US Capitol building (photo credit: courtesy)

House measure would create religious minorities envoy

Move seeks to protect religious groups including Jews in parts of Asia and the Middle East