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Five things we just learned about Donald Trump’s Jewish doctor

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Harold Bornstein, left, and his wife, Melissa (Facebook)
Harold Bornstein, left, and his wife, Melissa (Facebook)

Harold Bornstein, left, and his wife, Melissa (Facebook)

We already knew that Harold Bornstein, M.D., personal physician to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, was a bit unconventional.

To recap: His public letter about Trump’s health, released a year ago, included a typo and was swimming with hyperbole, assuring readers that Trump “will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” We also learned that the doctor is an Italian aficionado, delivering a speech in the language at his son’s bar mitzvah.

Now, a three-hour interview that Bornstein, a gastroenterologist, gave to the medical publication Stat has filled out the picture — and it hasn’t really changed much. Here are some nuggets from the colourful portrait of the Jewish man who keeps Trump healthy.

He sounds relaxed about the prospect of Trump dying in office.

Bornstein — who took over the practice of his father, Jacob, who grew up in a Yiddish-speaking home — hadn’t considered that, at 70, Trump would be the oldest president ever to take office. But the doctor isn’t too worried about the threat of his passing away.

“If something happens to him, then it happens to him,” Bornstein told Stat. “It’s like all the rest of us, no? That’s why we have a vice president and a speaker of the House and a whole line of people. They can just keep dying.” [Read more…]

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Oh, it’s frying time again — but it doesn’t have to be

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latkes-fired

From the JTA Archives: Making Chanukah food healthier

latkes-firedNEW YORK  — Gone are the days when the Chanukah holiday meant an eight-day binge fest of all things fried.

The Festival of Lights, which commemorates the Maccabean revolt against the Greeks, has a longstanding tradition of oily foods such as latkes and doughnuts in remembrance of the miracle of the temple oil, which lasted eight days instead of the expected one. But for some, the holiday has become an excuse to inhale fried potato pancakes and custard-filled pastry.

“People have a misconception of the tradition to fry on Chanukah,” Yosef Silver, the author of the popular blog This American Bite, told JTA. “The concept is to remember the oil, but that doesn’t necessarily mean frying. We’ve gotten so wrapped up with frying, but there are ways to make Chanukah food, like latkes, just using oil.” [Read more…]

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Israel seeks to take in, injured Aleppo civilians for treatment, Netanyahu says

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aleppo

“We see the tragedy of terrible suffering of civilians and I’ve asked the Foreign Ministry to seek ways to expand our medical assistance to the civilian causalities of the Syrian tragedy, specifically in Aleppo, where we’re prepared to take in wounded women and children, and also men if they’re not combatants.”

JERUSALEM — Israel’s Foreign Ministry is looking for ways to help assist Syrian civilians injured in the country’s civil war, including bringing them to Israel for medical treatment.

“We see the tragedy of terrible suffering of civilians and I’ve asked the Foreign Ministry to seek ways to expand our medical assistance to the civilian causalities of the Syrian tragedy, specifically in Aleppo, where we’re prepared to take in wounded women and children, and also men if they’re not combatants,” Netanyahu said Tuesday evening during a meeting with foreign journalists.

“We’d like to do that: Bring them to Israel, take care of them in our hospitals as we’ve done with thousands of Syrian civilians. We’re looking into ways of doing this; it’s being explored as we speak.”

Netanyahu said that Israel cannot resolve the crisis in Syria, but “can help mitigate some of the suffering. That is the best that Israel can do.”

Israel has treated many wounded Syrians in hospitals in northern Israel near the shared border with Syria. They are then returned to Syria.

Netanyahu added that Israel will not accept “spillover” from the Syrian war into Israel. The Israeli military has responded to nearly every incident of cross-border mortar or gunfire attacks.

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U.S. Rabbinical Assembly ousts Conservative rabbi for performing interfaith marriages

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wedding

“We’re isolating ourselves from our congregants at precisely the time they need us and want us most,” Rosenbloom said. “For many of these couples, once we say no to the wedding, it’s very hard for them to overcome that. The experience of rejection is far too great to even consider being part of the congregation.”

NEW YORK – Conservative Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom has been expelled from the Rabbinical Assembly, the movement’s rabbis’ association, for performing interfaith weddings.

An ordained Conservative rabbi for 44 years, Rosenbloom was expelled by unanimous vote last month after a hearing of the R.A.’s Executive Council. Since 1972, the Conservative movement has prohibited its rabbis from officiating at or even attending intermarriages.

Rosenbloom told JTA the council offered to retain his membership in exchange for a promise not to perform any more intermarriages. Rosenbloom declined the offer.

“I don’t have animus toward the R.A.,” Rosenbloom told JTA Friday. “It’s a futile policy, a policy that will eventually be overturned because the trend of history is against it. I have no bitterness… I don’t feel shunned or like an outcast.”

Rosenbloom, 72, is the retired rabbi of Congregation Adath Jeshurun, a 158-year-old synagogue near Philadelphia. He officiated at his first intermarriage, between his stepdaughter and her fiancé, shortly after retiring in the summer of 2014. Since then, he has performed four additional intermarriages and has plans to conduct two more. [Read more…]

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How the Israeli army wages war on waistlines

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fitness

Changes of Shape is the contribution of the Israeli army, one of the country’s most powerful institutions, to the battle of the bulge. Unlike most other “boot camps,”  the Israeli army takes a very different approach to weight loss than it does to preparing its soldiers for war.

NETANYA, Israel – One fit young soldier scales a rope. Two others practice hand-to-hand combat. A large group marches across the sand.

But those were just the inspirational photographs on the walls.

The actual soldiers crowded in the one-room building here on the Wingate army training base were mostly paunchy middle-aged officers. On a Tuesday morning before sunrise, several dozen of them stood around in socks and workout gear as they prepared to weigh in for a session of Changes of Shape, the Israeli army’s weight-loss program for officers. [Read more…]

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12 people killed, 48 injured, in Berlin terror attack

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Twelve people were killed on Monday evening when a truck plowed into a Christmas market near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. At least 48 people were seriously injured. (Odd Anderson/AFP/Getty Images)

Israeli tourist among injured, wife still missing

Twelve people were killed on Monday evening when a truck plowed into a Christmas market near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. At least 48 people were seriously injured. (Odd Anderson/AFP/Getty Images)

Twelve people were killed on Monday evening when a truck plowed into a Christmas market near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. At least 48 people were seriously injured. (Odd Anderson/AFP/Getty Images)

BERLIN – Twelve people were killed on Monday evening when a truck plowed into a Christmas market near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the centre of the German capital. At least 48 people were seriously injured including an Israeli tourist is among the injured in the terror attack.

The injured Israeli tourist was in the market with his wife, who is still missing, Elio Adler, a family friend in Berlin, told JTA. The husband was located in a Berlin hospital, where he is currently undergoing emergency surgery. The wife has not yet been located.

A memorial service has been planned by Chabad in Berlin, for Wednesday evening.

Chabad Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal, a rabbi in Berlin’s official Jewish community, told JTA that he had been to the scene of the attack on Monday night with colleague Rabbi Shmuel Segal to see if they could help. Teichtal told JTA that plans for the annual public menorah lighting ceremony at Berlin’s famous landmark, the Brandenburg Gate, would go ahead as planned, albeit with higher security.

Teichtal said he hoped that “more people than ever” would come to the event. “We have to have zero tolerance for terrorism and at the same time reach our hands out.” [Read more…]

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World must unite to fight terror, Netanyahu says after assassination of Russian envoy to Turkey

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JERUSALEM  — Israel condemned the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, in an attack described as an act of terror.

Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov was shot and killed while visiting an exhibition of Russian photographs in Ankara. The attacker, identified as a Turkish policeman, 22, shouted “Don’t forget Aleppo. Don’t forget Syria” in Turkish, and “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is Great” in Arabic, apparently referring to Russian air strikes on rebels in Aleppo as part of the Syrian conflict. The attacker was killed by police inside the exhibition hall. [Read more…]

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France postpones Paris peace conference to January

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France has postponed a planned international peace conference in Paris until January.

The meeting of foreign ministers as part of the Paris peace initiative had originally been scheduled to be held in Paris on Dec. 21. It was to be a follow up of a similar meeting was held in Paris in June. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives were invited to that meeting. [Read more…]

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Israeli billionaire diamond-mining magnate arrested for bribery

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Israeli billionaire diamond-mining magnate Beny Steinmetz was arrested on suspicion of international bribery and money laundering.

Steinmetz is accused of paying millions of dollars in bribes to officials in the Republic of Guinea, where he owns a mining company that had won mining rights in Guinea, in order to assist his business interests, according to reports citing the Israel Police. The mining company, BSG Resources, in a statement said that the allegations are not true.

Steinmetz was questioned Monday by an Israel Police anti-corruption unit and later arrested. His home and offices also were searched. [Read more…]

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Southern French city of Carpentras to renovate 650-year-old synagogue

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Local authorities in the city of Carpentras in southern France allocated $1.25 million U.S. for renovating the ceiling of the country’s oldest synagogue ahead of its 650th anniversary next year.

The city intends to defray some of the cost through admission fees to exhibitions that it is preparing to put on next year of items connected to the synagogue, including some of its priceless items of scripture – which predate the invention of the printing press, and an exhibit of photographs related to the local Jewish community, the news website France Bleu reported. [Read more…]

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