Josefin Dolsten is a New York-based writer who has reported for the Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Times of Israel and other Jewish publications. She currently works as an account director at Fenton Communications, supporting organizations that work to advance racial justice, LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights and more. Dolsten earned her B.A. in government from Cornell University and her M.A. in comparative religion and Jewish studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
(JTA) — Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student imprisoned by North Korea who remains in a coma since his release this week, was active at the campus Hillel and cared deeply about the Jewish community, its rabbi recalls. Warmbier, 22, a Cincinnati native, was traveling on a student tour of North Korea last year…
(JTA) — A major fire at a kosher supermarket in London brought forth an unexpected hero: Daisy, a 3-year-old spaniel dog. Alex Gibson and Charlotte Perren were sleeping in their apartment when the blaze broke out at the Kay’s store downstairs on Sunday morning. Gibson and Perren, who is pregnant, may have met a tragic fate were it not…
(JTA) — Around 200,000 people took to the streets to celebrate LGBTQ pride in Tel Aviv’s annual Gay Pride Parade, the biggest event of its kind in the Middle East. The Friday parade drew some 30,000 tourists from all over the world and celebrated “bisexual visibility.” Ahead of the parade, a poll found that support in the country for same-sex…
NEW YORK (JTA) — These days, there’s a dating site or app for just about any group you can imagine, from men with beards (and their admirers) to a farmers-only site. There’s even an app matches people based upon shared dislikes — as in “I saw you, too, hate paying extra for guacamole.” But one day it dawned upon Cynthia Shamash,…
(JTA) — The United Kingdom’s top Sephardic rabbi became the center of an international controversy after he praised societal acceptance of homosexuality as a “fantastic development.” Rabbi Joseph Dweck came under fire after making the comment at a lecture last month. An Orthodox rabbi in London asked a rabbinic court to look into removing Dweck from his position, and a…
(JTA) — In celebration of its 2017 centennial, JTA is highlighting stories from its archive. (JTA) — Things weren’t looking good for the more than 500 Allied soldiers trapped by German forces in France’s Argonne Forest in November 1918. Not only were they under fire from the Germans, they also were being bombarded with shells from Americans…
Michael Twitty dressed in the outfit that slaves wore in the American South — wool stockings, waistcoat and kerchief tied around his neck — to cook meat in an open-hearth oven on a historic Virginia plantation, more than one memory of slavery flashed through his mind. One memory, of his African-American ancestors in the South, seems obvious. The…
NEW YORK (JTA) — An Orthodox Jewish paramedic is suing a New York hospital for discrimination for not allowing her to wear skirts. In the civil suit filed Tuesday, Hadas Goldfarb says she was offered a job as a paramedic at the New York Presbyterian Hospital in 2015, but was terminated amid orientation after refusing to comply with the…
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