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 senior rabbi at Yeshiva University tore down posters promoting a lecture from a visiting rabbi and decried him as apikores, a perjorative Yiddish term used to describe a non-observant Jew or apostate. “He’s going to attack all the rebbes in Y.U. It’s like inviting a Reform rabbi to speak in Y.U.,” Yeshiva University’s Rabbi…
Among recent additions to the popular website Dicionary.com is the term “alt-right,” which catapulted into public consciousness in the last year or so, particularly during the fraught election season. Scholars, journalists and activists have struggled to pin down exactly what the term means — and it’s origins are even unclear. While white nationalist, or “Identitarian,”…
The white nationalist whose church was burned to the ground in North Dakota said he has hopes of rebuilding the structure — and naming it after President Trump. “If they want to keep pushing I just may very well retain the lot and build a building there and still make The President Donald J. Trump…
A fight with the Jewish Defense League outside the American Israel Public Affairs Committee left one Palestinian-American protester bloodied and bruised and resulted in the arrest of two Jewish men. A video of the fight was uploaded on Twitter by a freelance journalist. A pretty rough fight broke out early on. Here’s what I saw….
A placard bearing a notorious anti-Jewish “alt-right” slogan was waved by Trump supporters at a California rally over the weekend. At a Huntington Beach pro-Donald Trump demonstration, one supporter waved a sign reading “Da Goyim Know.” The slogan comes from an “alt-right” online meme. “Goyim” is a pejorative term for non-Jews. The second phrase of…
Paula White, a Florida televangelist and spiritual advisor to President Trump, is wishing her followers a meaningful Passover. “It is part of your spiritual heritage that God designed as His own Holy Days with specific instruction given for their observance,” White wrote in a public letter to followers. “He set the divine appointment, Passover, with…
During an annual celebration of the Nation of Islam, the group’s leader Minister Louis Farrakhan told the audience that Israelis and Prime Minister Netanyahu had no biblical claim to the land — and that their days in the region were numbered. “Netanyahu, you’re coming out of there. You don’t have a permanent home there,” Farrakhan…
The white nationalist who fatally stabbed a black man in New York said he cultivated his worldview online, where he frequented websites like the “alt-right” neo-Nazi hub the Daily Stormer. In a Sunday interview with the Daily News, 28-year-old white nationalist James Jackson said he hoped his killing of a black man would discourage interracial…
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