A US federal judge is weighing the fate of a Chasidic rabbi who is citing Talmudic law as a justification for his refusal to testify against fellow Jews before a Los Angeles grand jury investigating tax evasion.

Moshe Zigelman, who was the executive assistant to Grand Rabbi Naftali Tzi Weisz of the Brooklyn-based Spinka sect of Chasids, received a two-year sentence in 2009 after he pleaded guil

The Jewish music label and events promoter JDub is shutting down - a victim of the recession and lack of donations.

In a letter on its website, founder Aaron Bisman expressed sorrow over the decision, saying: "The challenges facing our business model are too great to overcome."

With the Jewish vote emerging as a key battleground in the 2012 election, prominent Jewish supporters of President Obama are mounting a campaign to win more Democrat votes from the American Jewish community .

A wheelchair-bound Chasidic Jew has filed more than 80 lawsuits in the past year over handicapped access, including suing a pedicure salon in Manhattan - even though he has no feet.

American Jewish groups are fighting a proposed ban of Sharia law in the state of Oklahoma.

A coalition of organisations that include the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) are backing a legal appeal against a measure that would prevent Islamic law from being used in the state's courts.

An elderly and prominent Syrian rabbi from Brooklyn has pleaded guilty to laundering tens of thousands of dollars through a religious charity.

Saul Kassin, 89, rabbi of Congregation Sharee Zion in Brooklyn, the largest Syrian Sephardic synagogue in the US, confessed his crime to a federal court earlier this week.

The nomination of White House adviser Daniel Shapiro as US ambassador to Israel has won praise across the spectrum from US Jewish organistions which saw Shapiro as the best man for the job-and one who has the President's ear.

Mr Shapiro, 41, will replace Bush appointee James Cunningham. The nomination must be confirmed by the US Senate.

The Jewish community in Richmond, Virginia, is up in arms over a video posted on YouTube showing Orthodox worshippers passing around an AK-47 at prayers marking the end of Shabbat.

The video, made on January 8 - the day Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Arizona - shows Asher Meza, an Orthodox convert, admiring the gun with other Jews worshipping at the home of Rabbi Joseph Kolakowski.

Jewish organisations ranging from major players to small non-profits will be forced to give up millions of dollars as a result of "clawback" lawsuits filed by the trustee representing the victims of fraudster Bernard Madoff.

While Hadassah was never sued by Irving Picard, the trustee who this month unleashed a barrage of clawback actions, it announced earlier this month that it had agreed to pay back $45 million.

This sum, agreed after lengthy negotiations with Mr Picard, was slightly less than half of the profits Hadassah had made from investing with Madoff since 1988.

American Jewish groups are expressing cautious relief after the US Presbyterian Church diluted what had threatened to be a venomously anti-Israel report at its General Assembly.

The church's 700 delegates in Minneapolis last week passed a revised Middle East Study Committee Report that unambiguously recognised Israel's right to exist and accepted the need to stem the flow of weapons into Gaza.