(JTA) — At least a dozen Holocaust memorial stones were stolen in Berlin ahead of the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom. The “Stolpersteine,” or “stumbling stones,” are gold-colored, cobblestone-sized monuments embedded in sidewalks in Berlin and other cities in Germany and across Europe. On Monday, the memorials were dug up and stolen on several streets…
(JTA) — A racist message was written in the skylight windows of a New Jersey synagogue using shingles torn off the building’s roof to form the letters. Rabbi Nathan Weiner of Congregation Beth Tikvah in Evesham Township, which is located in the southern part of the state about 25 miles from Philadelphia, said the word…
(JTA) — Schools will remain closed on the High Holidays in Baltimore County, the home to several large Jewish communities, for the 2018-19 school year following an extended debate. The Baltimore County school board on Tuesday night voted 9-3 to approve the academic calendar for the next term with the district closing on the first…
(JTA) — Two University of Illinois students will be charged with a felony for vandalizing the menorah in front of the Urbana-Champaign school’s Chabad Center for Jewish Life. Jacob Bassler and Nicholas Gustafson, both 18, turned themselves in to university police, the local Fox News affiliate reported. Security cameras caught two people pushing a shopping…
Six-year-old Arabella Kushner is big in China—and her grandfather, President Trump, is showing her off in diplomatic meetings. Last year, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Ivanka Trump posted a video of her daughter singing a song in Mandarin. The video became an instant hit in China. On Wednesday, President Trump sought to break the ice with…
A new Jewish religious school opened today in the city of Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan — Russia’s largest Muslim republic. The November 8 opening of school, a branch of Chabad’s Yeshiva Tomchei Temimim, was lauded as a “major breakthrough” for Kazan’s Jewish community by the website Chabad.org. The inauguration was timed…
The so-called Paradise Papers, detailing how the world’s richest use offshore accounts to evade taxes, have exposed the investments of several major Jewish political donors, the New York Times reported. The papers show that when it comes to stashing their cash, the nation’s wealthiest are in-step with one another on how to do it —…
An anti-Trump backlash at the polls this election season has seen a Black Lives Matter lawyer elected as the district attorney of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Magazine reported. Larry Krasner, a longtime civil rights lawyer and thorn in the side of Philly’s City Hall, cruised to victory over Beth Grossman, the Republican candidate. Though a relatively minor…
A Staten Island man is claiming that Morgan Stanley, his former employer, fired him for pursuing Hasidic clients, SILive.com reported. Michael Pellegrino, a stockbroker, says that his bosses referred to Hasidic Jews as “unicorns” and disparaged him for having an association with the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. According to a wrongful termination suit filed by Pellegrino,…
Kalman Yeger won a landslide victory over Yoni Hikind in the bitter battle for a heavily ultra-Orthodox City Council district in Brooklyn’s Boro Park neighborhood. Yeger, a former aide to outgoing councilmemeber David Greenfield, had 67% of the vote to Hikind’s 29% with all precincts reporting. One of the hardest fought/nastiest races, between Kalman Yeger…
In an unusual role reversal, a university Hillel canceled a speaker due to pressure from a left-wing Jewish student group — but now the Hillel has apologized for doing so. Princeton University’s Hillel decided not to host an event featuring Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely when the Alliance of Jewish Progressives claimed that Hotovely…
