News Brief

U.S. authorities have seized $150 million from a New York account of the Lebanon’s Banque Libano Francaise SAL (BLF), which authorities say is connected with a larger scheme to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through U.S. banks for the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi said in Berlin that medical training for mohels, or ritual circumcisers, could resolve concerns in Germany regarding circumcision of male children.

In meetings Tuesday with government officials and Berlin’s Jewish community, Rabbi Yonah Metzger noted that mohels could be trained and certified by German doctors. But he emphasized that the Chief Rabbinate in Israel has to make final decision on whether a mohel is up to par.

A group of grandchildren of Nazis, along with Holocaust survivors and their descendants, were taking part in a march across Poland with former Nazi death camps along their route this week, AFP reported.

The march was organized by the Protestant TOS Church in Tuebingen, Germany, after many in the church began looking into their family history and discovered Nazi family connections.

Casino mogul and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson and his wife have contributed to an independent super PAC to support Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s congressional candidacy.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s European office, the Russian Holocaust Center of Moscow and Verbe et Lumiere criticized Ukrainian authorities Monday for replacing a plaque at Babi Yar identifying the thousands of Jews murdered there during the Holocaust with an epitaph referencing only “the peaceful citizens of Rostov-on-the-Don and Soviet prisoners of war.”

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is considering amending the Camp David Accords to give Egypt full control over the Sinai, his legal adviser told a national newspaper.

Mohamed Gadallah told the Egyptian Al-Masry Al-Youm that Morsi is “studying” whether to amend the basis for the peace treaty signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979.

The Israel Ambulatory Pediatric Association is calling for an end to a controversial circumcision-related rite that is also under fire in New York.

Direct oral-genital suction, known as metzitzah b’peh, should not be performed during Jewish ritual circumcision, the IAPA said. The association is calling on Israel’s Health Ministry to require maternity wards and clinics to advise parents against metzitzah b’peh, Israeli media reported.

New York State Police are investigating allegations of sexual abuse by a truck driver making a delivery to a Jewish camp, The New York Post reported.

Surveillance video captured footage of a kosher-food truck driver entering bunks for seventh-and eighth-grade boys at Camp Shalva near South Fallsburg, N.Y., early on Aug. 8, according to the newspaper. The suspect is accused of molesting several of the campers.

Haredi Orthodox men in Israel are buying glasses that will prevent them from seeing the immodest women that threaten their way of life.

The glasses, which are being sold for $32.50, have a special blur-inducing sticker on their lenses that provides clear vision for up to a few yards so as not to impede movement, but anything beyond that becomes blurry -- including women.

While it is not known how many have been purchased, the devices have gone on sale recently in haredi Orthodox neighborhoods of Jerusalem and elsewhere, reported the Times of Israel.

Sami Rohr, a Jewish philanthropist living in Florida, has died at the age of 86. Rohr was active with Chabad-Lubavitch and has donated more than $250 million to global Jewish causes. A $100,000 annual prize for Jewish literature given by the Jewish Book Council is named in his honor.