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Assassin Yigal Amir to father a child

jerusalem (jps) | The High Court of Justice ruled June 13 that Yigal Amir and his wife, Larissa Trimbobler, could have a child.

The court rejected a petition to prevent Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin and his wife from having a baby via artificial insemination.

In March, Amir was sentenced to 30 days without any visitors and 14 days without telephone calls and fined $22.50 after prison officers caught him trying to smuggle sperm samples to his wife.

The Israel Prison Service had already said that in principle it would allow Amir and Trimbobler to have a child by artificial insemination, although it twice warned him not to give samples before the process had been arranged.

jaffa (jta) | The Reform movement in Israel inaugurated a $12 million cultural center in Jaffa on Sunday, June 18.

The facility, to be opened officially in October, will be called Mishkenot Daniel. The decision to put it in Jaffa was part of the movement’s efforts to reach out to middle- and working-class families in Jaffa and Tel Aviv.

The inauguration coincided with the first annual convention of the Association of Reform Zionists in Israel to be held in the Jewish state.

The center will include a youth hostel, auditorium, classrooms and a synagogue. Some prominent American Jews have donated to its building, and Israeli Reform movement officials hope local Reform congregants will help raise additional funds for the complex.

Israel’s chief justice backs civil marriage

beersheva (ynet) | At the Ben-Gurion University Medical School graduation June 14, Rania Okabi, 26, became the first Bedouin woman in the country to become a physician.

Dr. Okabi, who specialized in gynecology and obstetrics at the Rambam Hospital in Haifa, hopes that her achievement will set an example for all Bedouin girls.

Okabi is one of the first graduates of a project initiated by the Beersheva university, aimed at encouraging high school students to enter paramedical fields and increasing their chances of being accepted to medical studies in college.