year in review
MIRIAM AL STER/FLASH90
continued from page 83
The Swarthmore Hillel votes to disaffiliate from Hillel International
to protest the Jewish campus group's rules on Israel programming.
In 2013, the Pennsylvania college's Hillel ignited a national debate
on Hillel International's Israel policies, which restrict programs with
speakers who support boycotting the Jewish state.
Netanyahu wins a fourth term, his third in a row, as Israel's prime
minister, roundly defeating his main challenger, Isaac Herzog of
the Zionist Union. Netanyahu's remarks in the days before the elec-
tion prove highly controversial as he says a Palestinian state will not
be established under his watch and warns on Election Day about
Arab-Israelis turning out to vote in large numbers. The comments
are condemned in the United States by the Reform and Conservative
movements and by President Obama. Netanyahu later apologizes
to Israel's Arabs and insists he still backs a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Seven children, ages 5 to 16, are killed in a Brooklyn house fire report-
edly caused by a malfunctioning Sabbath hot plate. The children's
mother, Gayle Sassoon, and her daughter Tziporah sustain injuries in
the blaze but survive; the father was out of town at a religious confer-
ence. The children are buried in Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, sing the Israeli
anthem along with Likud members at the party's headquarters in Tel Aviv, March
18, 2015.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is found guilty of fraud
under aggravating circumstances and breach of trust for accepting
cash-filled envelopes from U.S. Jewish businessman Morris Talansky
and using it for personal gain. Olmert's lawyers later appeal the verdict
in what is known as the "Talansky Affair"
April 2015
Negotiators for the United States, five other world powers and Iran
reach a framework accord for a deal to limit Iran's nuclear program
and set June 30 as the deadline for a final, comprehensive deal.
A mourner near the fresh graves of the seven children from the Sassoon family
during their funeral in Jerusalem, March 23, 2015
IRIAM ALSTER/FLAS H90
Women of the Wall, a group that promotes women's religious rights at
the Western Wall, for the first time reads from a full-size Torah scroll
during its monthly prayer service at the Kotel, contravening regula-
tions there. The Torah was passed across the barrier between the
men's and women's sections by male supporters. The following month,
police block and arrest a man who attempts to repeat the effort.
Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, a leader of the national religious move-
ment in Israel, a head of the Har Etzion Yeshiva in the West Bank and
a prominent modern Orthodox scholar, dies at 81.
The White House acknowledges that a U.S. drone strike in the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border area in January accidentally killed
Warren Weinstein, the Jewish-American government contractor who
had been held hostage by al-Qaida since 2011. An Italian hostage,
Giovanni Lo Porto, who was held captive since 2012, also was killed in
the strike on an al-Qaida-linked compound.
The American Jewish Reconstructionist movement is roiled by debate
about whether to drop its longstanding ban against intermarried rab-
binical school students. Some synagogues threaten to quit the move-
ment if the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College becomes the first of
America's four major Jewish religious denominations to ordain inter-
married rabbis; the debate continues.
continued on page 86
84 September 10 • 2015
Women from the Women of the Wall organization dance with the Torah scroll at the
group's monthly prayer services at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, April 20, 2015.
It marked the first time since the group was founded 26 years ago that members
read from a full-size Torah scroll at the Western Wall, in violation of regulations at
the holy site.