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.