David Kustoff, one of two Republican Jews in the House, is pushing a bill to slap heavier penalties and an automatic hate crime designation on those who threaten religious buildings, following March’s spate of bomb threats against Jewish community centers. “Frankly, it wouldn’t matter what my religion is,” Kustoff, a freshman congressman from western Tennessee,…
(JTA) — A former Texas prison inmate who won the right to receive kosher food and have it provided to all observant Jewish inmates in the state dropped his 12-year-old federal lawsuit against the prison system. Max Moussazadeh, 40, was serving a 75-year prison sentence for serving as a lookout during a 1993 murder when he filed…
Barry Manilow has spoken publicly for the first time about being gay, saying he feared he would disappoint his mostly female fan base had he come out decades ago. The “Can’t Smile Without You” singer, now 73, talked with People magazine and Entertainment Tonight about his previously secret, almost 40-year romance with husband Garry Kief….
As the Trump White House falters in its efforts to “make America great again,” the “alt-right” has started its blame game – and Jared Kushner’s West Wing role has started to fuel conspiracy theories. The alt-right is the label for contemporary white supremacists and nationalists, and fellow travelers who like to play online with those…
Israel’s Labor Party is not that innocent – it’s delayed its leadership election because of a Britney Spears concert slated to take place on the same day as voting. Party sources told Ha’aretz the postponement was more due to logistical concerns than to deference for the American pop star, who will take the stage at…
Masha Leon, the Forward’s society columnist for nearly 30 years, died Wednesday morning. She was 86 years old. Leon covered Jewish charity galas and events in her weekly column, “On the Go,” for more than three decades, beginning at the time of the English Forward’s founding in 1990. She continued to write the column through…
A pair of American genealogists believe they’ve found information linking the wife of White House staffer Ezra Cohen-Watnick with pro-Russian advocacy in the U.S. After learning of Cohen-Watnick’s alleged involvement in providing Republican Devin Nunes with information showing members of the Trump transition team had shown up in secret intelligence reports, genealogists Renee Stern Steinig…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Ten Indian-Jewish couples from the Bnei Menashe “lost tribe” were married in a Jewish ceremony at an absorption center in northern Israel. The group wedding remarriage ceremony on Sunday in the Kfar Hasidim community was part of the couples’ formal conversion to Judaism. The couples, who immigrated from India, ranged in age…
(JTA) — Why is this matzo brei different from all others? It’s a favorite of Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg, that’s why. The Academy Award-winning director — the force behind “Schindler’s List,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “E.T.” and scores of other popular films — has shared his family matzo brei recipe with Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s upscale food and…
(JTA) — Jewish groups decried a decision by the Labour Party to temporarily suspend Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, rather than expel him over comments deemed anti-Semitic. Livingstone, 71, was suspended for a year from his party on Tuesday for an April 2016 interview with BBC radio in which he said, “Let’s remember when Hitler won his election…
(JTA) — The former mayor of a small town in western Guatemala was sentenced to a year in prison for expelling the Lev Tahor sect of haredi Orthodox Jews. Antonio Adolfo Perez y Perez of San Juan La Laguna was found guilty of coercion in the expulsion, which took place in 2014. Up to 500 members of…
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