October 1994

TEL AVIV — A powerful bomb rips apart a bus traveling on Dizengoff Street in the heart of Tel Aviv, killing 23 people and leaving more than 40 wounded. Hamas claims responsibility for the attack.

ARAVA CROSSING, Israel — Israel and Jordan sign a peace treaty, marking only the second time in Israel's history that it has signed a peace accord with an Arab country.

JERUSALEM — The kidnapping of 19-year-old soldier Nachshon Waxman by Islamic fundamentalists grips the nation and ends in his death when a rescue attempt fails.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Supreme Court rejects an appeal from Jewish organizations to hear the case of accused Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk, leaving a Cleveland district court to consider deportation proceedings.

NEW YORK — The Hungarian government apologizes to the Jewish people for its role in deporting Jews to their deaths in the Holocaust.

November 1994

WASHINGTON — Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky visits America and angers Jews when he blames them for the Bolshevik Revolution and the breakup of the former Soviet Union.

GENEVA — Switzerland, a country traditionally regarded as neutral, shocks Jewish communities worldwide when it releases documents revealing a 1938 pact with the Nazis that prevented thousands of Jews from fleeing Germany.

December 1994

WASHINGTON — The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, incensing several Jewish groups and causing one committee member to resign in protest.

JERUSALEM — After a 10-month hiatus, Israel and Syria resume peace talks.

WASHINGTON — Martin Indyk is named U.S. ambassador to Israel, making him the first Jew to serve in that post.

January 1995

JERUSALEM — After an emotional dispute between Palestinians and Israeli settlers, the Israeli Cabinet agrees to halt construction of 500 housing units at a site near the West Bank town of Efrat.

NEW YORK — The person who killed teen-age Chassid Aaron Halberstam on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is sentenced to more than 141 years in prison.

BONN — The conference of German bishops admits the "shared responsibility" of the Catholic Church for anti-Semitism during World War II.

JERUSALEM — Jordan and the PLO reach an agreement on Jerusalem — the PLO concedes Jordanian custodianship over Muslim holy sites, while Jordan backs future Palestinian sovereignty in eastern Jerusalem.

JERUSALEM — Twenty-one Israelis are killed, most of them soldiers, and more than 60 wounded when two bombs explode at a crowded bus stop at Beit Lid Junction, north of Netanya.

WASHINGTON — President Clinton signs an executive order freezing the U.S. assets and banning charitable contributions for 12 Middle East terrorist groups, including two extremist Jewish organizations.

OSWIECIM, Poland — Ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz are clouded in controversy as Jewish groups criticize the Polish government's decision to memorialize Auschwitz as a universal symbol of man's inhumanity to man, without paying tribute to the uniquely Jewish dimension of the suffering.

February 1995

NEW YORK — The Council of Jewish Federations moves to substantially increase total federation allocations for Hillels from $11 million to $20 million during the next seven years.

JERUSALEM — The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial rejects a request by a group of ultra-religious Jews to remove photographs of Holocaust victims going to their deaths naked.

March 1995

JERUSALEM — Police investigate allegations that senior members of the Labor Party siphoned funds from the Histadrut labor federation for use in their 1992 election campaigns.

JERUSALEM — Two Israelis are killed and five others wounded when terrorists open fire on an Egged bus traveling from Jerusalem to the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron.

WASHINGTON — A record 93 senators join in urging the Clinton administration to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

WASHINGTON — The Senate's only Orthodox Jew, Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), initiates a controversial drive to give low-income parents vouchers to send their children to private and parochial schools.

April 1995

WASHINGTON — Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, extends an olive branch to the Jewish community in a speech before the Anti-Defamation League, apologizing for insensitivity on the part of evangelical Christians.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) announces that he will enter the race for the Republican presidential nomination, making him the first Jew to launch a serious bid for the White House.

PARIS — French Jewish leaders are distressed by the strong showing of National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in countrywide elections.

JERUSALEM — Two suicide bombings near Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip kill seven Israeli soldiers and an American woman, Alisa Flatow, who was studying in an Israeli yeshiva.

May 1995

NEW YORK — After months of negotiations with a Jewish Holocaust survivors group, the Mormon Church agrees to stop posthumously baptizing Jews.

June 1995

KRAKOW, Poland — A prominent Polish priest's use of anti-Semitic language — and the refusal of President Lech Walesa to condemn it directly — trigger a controversy in Poland and around the world.

July 1995

JERUSALEM — Avraham Burg is elected chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel and the World Zionist Organization.