5774: Year in review

Ariel SharonNEW YORK – Read about the highs and lows of 5774 – and everything in between.

January 2014

Ariel Sharon, the controversial warrior-turned-statesman who served as Israel’s prime minister from 2001 until 2006, when he was rendered comatose by a stroke, dies at age 85.

Brooklyn Hasidic real estate developer Menachem Stark is kidnapped, his lifeless body later found in a dumpster. The New York Post provokes outrage among many Jews with a cover calling him a slumlord and a headline asking, “Who didn’t want him dead?” Months later, a construction worker is arrested for the killing.

JTA and MyJewishLearning, which includes the popular parenting website Kveller.com, announce their intention to merge.

The Israeli government announces that it plans to invest more than $1 billion over the next 20 years to strengthen the Jewish identity of Diaspora Jews, particularly young Jews, but the details remain fuzzy.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel reaches an agreement with the Rabbinical Council of America to accept automatically letters from RCA members vouching for the Jewish status of Israeli immigrants. The agreement follows a temporary suspension by the Chief Rabbinate in accepting such letters from at least one well-known RCA member, Rabbi Avi Weiss of Riverdale, N.Y.

Two modern Orthodox high schools in New York stir controversy with decisions to allow girls who wish to lay tefillin to do so.

UJA-Federation of New York, the largest Jewish federation in North America, names attorney Eric Goldstein as its new CEO and successor to longtime CEO John Ruskay.

Actress Scarlett Johansson comes under criticism for serving as a spokeswoman for the Israeli company SodaStream, which has facilities in the West Bank. Johansson, who is Jewish, stands by SodaStream and resigns as a global ambassador for the British-based charity Oxfam. She says she and Oxfam have “a fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.”

The Israel Air Force is accused of attacking a warehouse of advanced Russian-made S-300 missiles in the Syrian port city of Latakia. Israel declines to comment on the attack.

A federal judge tosses out a $380 million sexual abuse lawsuit filed against Yeshiva University by 34 former students of its high school for boys. The suit alleged that the university ignored warnings of assault by two faculty members between 1969 and 1989. In dismissing the lawsuit, Judge John Koeltl rules that the statute of limitations has expired.

Abraham Foxman announces he is stepping down as national director of the Anti-Defamation League after 27 years in the post. Foxman, a child survivor of the Holocaust and one of the highest profile American Jewish leaders, says he will step down in July 2015.

Henry Waxman, Longtime California Rep., announces his retirement. Waxman had represented California’s 33rd District since 1975 and was considered the dean of Jewish lawmakers.

Jewish philanthropist and humanitarian Anne Heyman, founder of the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda, dies during an equestrian competition in Palm Beach, Fla.

February 2014

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, top the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of the top 50 U.S. donors to charitable causes in 2013. In December, the couple gave 18 million shares of Facebook stock, valued at more than $970 million, to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

The government of Spain approves a bill to facilitate the naturalization of Sephardic Jews of Spanish descent.

Staff at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem go on strike as the hospital, facing a huge deficit, teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and fails to pay its workers.

Alice Herz-Sommer, the 110-year-old Holocaust survivor and concert pianist whose life is the subject of a documentary that a week later would win an Oscar, dies.

The Giymat Rosa Synagogue in Zaporizhia, in eastern Ukraine, is firebombed and sustains minor damage. The attack comes amid growing turmoil in Ukraine following the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych.

March 2014

AIPAC leaders emphasize bipartisanship and mutual respect at the group’s annual policy conference in Washington. The conference follows a bruising period in which the pro-Israel lobby had championed a new Iran sanctions bill only to back down when it became clear the bill lacked the necessary support from the White House and congressional Democrats to pass.

Israeli aircraft, in one of many low-level skirmishes over the course of months, strike several targets in the Gaza Strip after Palestinians fire rockets into Israel, sending Israelis into bomb shelters.

David Hellman, a New York personal trainer, pleads guilty to using violent means to force recalcitrant husbands to give their wives a Jewish writ of divorce, or get. Hellman, who faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, was one of 10 men arrested in October 2013 in an FBI sting operation.

Yeshiva University is at risk of running out of unrestricted cash in the near-term future, warns Moody’s Investors Service, which says deep and growing operating deficits are likely to continue at the university due to “poor financial oversight and high expenses.” In May, Y.U. will announce that the Montefiore Health System is assuming operational control of Y.U.’s Albert Einstein School of Medicine.

Ehud Olmert, former Israeli Prime Minister, is found guilty of accepting bribes in the corruption case involving the Holyland real estate development in Jerusalem. Olmert, who is convicted of receiving about $150,000 in bribes through his brother Yossi, becomes the first former Israeli prime minister to be convicted of taking a bribe. The crime carries a possible sentence of 10 years in prison.

April 2014

Mobilized by the death of Samuel Sommers – the 8-year-old son of Rabbi Phyllis and Michael Sommers whose struggle with leukemia was documented on a popular blog called Superman Sam – 73 rabbis shave their heads to raise $600,000 for pediatric cancer research.

American-Jewish contractor Alan Gross goes on a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment in a Cuban jail and the lack of American assistance. Later in the year, in ailing health and with no prospect of release, Gross bids goodbye to his family during a prison visit.

White supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller, 73, kills a man and his grandson outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and then shoots to death a woman at a Jewish assisted-living facility a few blocks away. None of the victims is Jewish, highlighting the diverse constituency served by America’s Jewish institutions.

Casino magnate and conservative backer Sheldon Adelson buys another Israeli newspaper, Makor Rishon, making him the owner of several of Israel’s major right-wing media outlets and two of the country’s four major newspapers.

After weeks of near breakdowns in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Israel suspends all negotiations after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party signs a unity accord with Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. President Obama responds by saying it may be time for a pause in Middle East peacemaking. Kerry later expresses regret for saying that Israel risks becoming an “apartheid” state or a non-Jewish one if the two-state solution is not implemented. U.S. negotiators blame Israel for the talks’ collapse.

Gennady Kernes, the Jewish mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is shot in a suspected assassination attempt that leaves him in critical condition. The shooting comes amid growing violence between Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists in eastern Ukraine and forces loyal to the new Ukrainian government in Kiev. Kernes is airlifted to Israel for treatment.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations rejects J Street’s bid for membership. J Street, the liberal Washington group that lobbies for increased American pressure to bring about a Mideast peace deal, lost its bid for membership in the main communal group on foreign policy issues by a vote of 22-17, with three abstentions. J Street needed the support of two-thirds of the conference’s 51 members to gain admission.

Los Angeles Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling is banned from the NBA for life and fined $2.5 million after being caught on tape making racist comments to his girlfriend. He is heard saying that his views reflect the way the world works, and as evidence he says that black Jews in Israel “are just treated like dogs.” His girlfriend is heard countering that as a Jew, Sterling should know better than to advocate discrimination and citing the Holocaust as an example of where racism can lead.

An arm of the private equity firm Bain Capital purchases the Manischewitz Company, the iconic producer of kosher packaged goods, for an undisclosed sum. According to The New York Times, the new owners are expected to promote kosher as an indication of quality food rather than just a religious designation.

Genealogical research reveals that the late archbishop of New York, Cardinal John O’Connor, technically was Jewish. O’Connor’s mother, Dorothy Gumple O’Connor, was born Jewish but converted to Catholicism before she met and married O’Connor’s father.