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.
Presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s support among African Americans is abysmally low. An August poll put it at effectively zero. So who was waving the bewildering “Blacks for Trump” signs at a recent Florida rally? .@realDonaldTrump praises “Blacks for Trump” signs at FL rally: “Blacks for Trump. You watch. You watch.” https://t.co/nbcZRDpXl9 — ABC News Politics…
Police arrested two men in connection with the vandalism of an eruv built in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, the NYPD said. Yosef Kratz, 36, and Yosef Doran, 21, were both arrested on charges that they attempted to vandalize the eruv, a ritual boundary that marks off areas where Orthodox Jews may move more…
When Bob Dylan became the first musician to win the Nobel Prize in Literature this month, Jewish fans celebrated. Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, was seen as a true American poet, a Jew to be proud of. An opinion piece on this news site praised Dylan as the “most revolutionary artist of the past half-century” who…
Republican candidate Donald Trump is now heralded as hero by white nationalists, his promise to “Make America Great Again,” a rallying cry for nativists accross the country. But not long ago, this alliance between Trump and white nationalists would have seemed impossible. Trump was hardly a favorite; some saw him as a selfish mercenary or…
Jewish students at the University of Virginia were horrified this weekend after discovering graffiti at a nearby apartment complex. A large Star of David was painted, with the word “Juden” underneath it — German for “Jewry.” For students, the graffiti evoked Nazi imagery. “It’s direct Holocaust imagery and that’s what’s problematic about it,” third-year college…
Reports of anti-Semitic assaults rose dramatically in the past year, particularly on college campuses. And while there may be a tendency to view all critique of Israel as anti-Semitic, a new study finds that at three major universities, politics are not to blame. “The anti-Semitism that is felt on campus isn’t necessarily attached to Israel,…
At a burial shrine set in the rolling farmland of Pennsylvania, a group of Sufi devotees swayed in prayer, chanting the many names of God. The women, heads covered in loose shawls, sat on one side; the men, some clutching prayer beads, on the other. One woman, overcome with emotion, wept openly. At the center…
In 1971 a mysterious Sufi mystic arrived in America from Sri Lanka to spread a message of religious and racial unity. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen was his name and he amassed a following — in a country reeling from the social, political and religious upheaval of the 1970s, his message resonated. All along, Bawa’s inner circle of…
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