Sam Kestenbaum is a contributing editor and former staff writer for the Forward. Before this, he worked for The New York Times and newsrooms in Sana, Ramallah and Beijing. Contact him at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum and on Instagram at @skestenbaum.
A man with a history of arson has been arrested for torching an elaborately-decorated Jewish art bus in Crown Heights. Jackson Joseph, a 30-year-old Brownsville resident, was arrested Monday on charges of arson and criminal mischief, the website Vos Iz Neias reported. Joseph has a history of arson, DNAinfo reported. He was arrested at age…
Kodak Black, the 20-year-old rapper who recently began attending a Hebrew Israelite congregation in Florida, is proudly showing off a new piece of jewelry — a bejeweled pendant of the Hebrew word chai, which means life. Captioning on Instagram, Black quoted a lyric from the rapper Drake, about how he’s seen “so many blessings.” “Someone…
Three newly-painted public murals of the Lubavitcher Rebbe were vandalized in Crown Heights late last week, exposing an ongoing debate about the image of the movement’s late charismatic leader — who is revered as the Messiah by a vocal segment of the community. The community website Collive uploaded surveillance footage on Friday of two young…
Alice Collins Plebuch, raised in a proud Irish Catholic family, sent away for a “just-for-fun DNA test” — but the results changed her life. She found out that somewhere in her family, she had Jewish roots. Plebuch told the Washington Post about her surprising journey of self-discovery in a recent story. Plebuch, now 69, was…
An Orthodox Jewish group seeking to expand a religious boundary into the northwest corner of New Jersey has hired a Manhattan law firm to defend itself against possible legal action. A member of the South Monsey Eruv Fund, which hopes to expand a religious enclosure known as an eruv into the towns of Mahwah, Upper…
Members of the a movement advocating for greater Jewish access to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem are upset about the removal of metal detectors outside entrances and the return of Muslim oversight to the complex — viewing the move as a betrayal on the part of Israeli leaders. “Bibi doesn’t have the heart to place…
A controversial ritual boundary built by Orthodox Jews in the suburban New Jersey town of Mahwah has been vandalized —and police are investigating the incident as a bias crime. The damage to the enclosure, called an eruv, is being probed as a bias incident because of the religious nature of the installation, NewJersey.com reported. The…
The New Jersey hamlet of Mahwah has become the latest flashpoint in tensions between locals and a growing Orthodox population in the far northeast corner of the state along the border with New York. A symbolic boundary that allows religious Jews to carry objects outside on the Sabbath, called an eruv, is at the heart…
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