NEW YORK (JTA) — The Reform movement became the largest Jewish body to oppose the nomination of David Friedman as United States ambassador to Israel. In a statement released Friday, one day after the launch of Senate hearings to confirm Friedman, Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs released a statement saying Friedman is “the wrong…
(JTA) — Chabad, the Hasidic movement that operates Jewish centers in more than 90 countries, has set up shop in the Pacific island archipelago of New Caledonia, which has 250,000 residents and 250 Jews. The movement’s emissaries to the island, which is a French territory, are Rabbi Menachem and Bassie Sabbach. The rabbi is a…
In the meme war over Pepe the Frog, the white nationalists won. Despite a a campaign to “save Pepe” from the “alt-right” who wielded images of the green frog to serve their ideology, Pepe remains solidly an online icon of white supremacy, posted on the Anti-Defamation League’s list of hate symbols. Now, the meme war…
There’s no Jewish caucus in Congress like the one that serves Hispanic lawmakers, for example, or African-American representatives. But rumors of an upcoming presidential executive order on religious freedom has led Jewish members of the House, at least the Democrats in the bunch, to pen a joint letter to the White House urging Trump to…
How do people behave when they visit a concentration camp or a Holocaust memorial? Do they act as if there are in place of reverence or mourning? Or do they behave as crowds do at any tourist attraction — taking selfies, goofing around, snacking and drinking as they amble along? Just what constitutes appropriate behavior…
Swedish furniture retailer Ikea has come under fire in Israel after publishing a catalog without women. Hoping to appeal to the country’s ultra-Orthodox Jews, the catalog released this month shows men and boys in domestic settings — clad in yarmulke and with side curls. They sit at a Sabbath table, in a study and a…
(JTA) – The slaying of five Israelis in January by Palestinian terrorists made that month the deadliest since June, according to the Shin Bet security service. Four of the victims were killed by a terrorist in Jerusalem on January 8, when the assailant drove his truck into a crowd of soldiers near the Armon Hanatziv…
A Nazi symbol or a piece of art? A vendor at the University of Southern California tried to explain that T-shirts featuring swastikas he was selling on campus were no more than an artistic expression. But according to a report on the local NBC news, the campus rabbi did not share the artistic value of…
At a press conference Thursday, President Donald Trump called on a reporter from the Orthodox magazine Ami. Within moments, he had interrupted the reporter and told him to sit down. “Are you are a friendly reporter?” Trump asked. “I’m friendly,” said Ami’s Jake Turx. “Watch how friendly he is,” Trump said. Turx went on to…
(JTA) — The Jewish reporter whom Donald Trump accused of lying at a press conference where the president was asked about anti-Semitism defended Trump’s actions as owing to a misunderstanding. Jake Turx, a reporter for Ami Magazine, told Fox News he believed Trump acted defensively before hearing out Turx out at the press conference because…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League decried President Donald Trump’s brusque treatment of a reporter who asked about a spike in anti-Semitic incidents and challenged him to offer an explicit condemnation of anti-Semitism. “It is honestly mind-boggling why President Trump prefers to shout down a reporter or brush this off…
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