News Brief

The Zionist Organization of America lost its tax exempt status due to a late filing of tax returns.

The ZOA did not file returns for three consecutive years, the Forward reported Tuesday.

Morton Klein, the ZOA’s president, confirmed to JTA that the organization has not been tax exempt since March. Since then, he said, the organization has filed the returns and is now seeking reinstatement.

The first Hebrew printing of the popular novel “Fifty Shades of Grey” sold out in a day.

The 50,000 copies of the book by British author E.L. James, which went on sale Sunday, were sold out by Monday morning, the Israeli business daily Globes reported.

The book, the first of a trilogy and initially published in English in June 2011, has sold 40 million copies in the United States and 10 million in Britain, according to Globes.

Israel is a solid investment, despite the many challenges it faces, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz told the “Innovate. Invest. Israel.” conference in New York on Monday.

The holiest day of the Jewish calendar could see one of the Jewish state’s most vocal opponents thrust into international spotlight.

On the fast day of Yom Kippur Sept. 26, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is likely to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Israel National News reported.

Police in Brooklyn and Englewood, N.J., are conducting a search for Caroline Starkman, an 18-year-old Englewood resident who has been missing since spending Shabbat in Brooklyn, over the July 4 weekend.

Her family has offered a $500 reward for information leading to her safe return, and her synagogue, Congregation Ahavath Torah in Englewood, has offered an additional $10,000 reward.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- After a firestorm of protest from Jewish delegates and Jewish elected officials, the Democratic National Committee on Wednesday voted to amend the party platform to include a provision recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Marc Stanley, chairman of the National Jewish Democratic Council, said that he learned that the delegates had approved the platform by affirmation shortly after 6 pm after long day in which changes to the platform occupied much of the press coverage of the convention here and caused discord within the party.

 A Jewish student at Michigan State University said he was attacked at an off-campus party in what he is calling a hate crime.

Just before the assault, which broke his jaw, Zach Tennen said his attackers asked him if he was Jewish, according to reports.

Tennen, 19, a resident of suburban Detroit, said he answered in the affirmative. He told WDIV-TV in Detroit that his attackers also “were making Nazi and Hitler symbols and they said they were part of the KKK.”

Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Chicago is set to succeed Rabbi Avi Weiss next year at the helm of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, the liberal Orthodox rabbinical school founded by the noted Riverdale rabbi.

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.