In one of his last interviews in office, President Barack Obama told The New York Times’ chief book critic, Michiko Kakutani, that he thinks Philip Roth and Saul Bellow rank among the greatest authors to explore the experience of being an outsider in the United States. “Some of the great books by Jewish authors like…
(JTA) — The speaker of Slovakia’s parliament initiated a criminal probe for alleged hate speech against a lawmaker who criticized the conferring of a national honor on Jewish laureates due to their ethnicity. Andrej Danko, the speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic, on Thursday said he would subject the far-right lawmaker Stanislav…
(JTA) — Britain prevented the European Union Foreign Affairs Council from adopting the closing statement from the Paris peace conference. Britain’s action, reported by Haaretz citing European and Israeli diplomats, comes a day after Britain refused to sign the closing statement at the peace conference in Paris. Britain had sent a low-level diplomat to the conference…
Tenants of almost forty buildings that Jared Kushner owns in the East Village are shocked about the appointment of their landlord as special advisor to the president, the Village Voice reported. Kushner has been repeatedly accused of tenant harassment and lack of providing essential services, in one building tenants didn’t have cooking gas for five…
(JTA) — British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has called on the government to investigate “improper interference in our democratic politics,” after an Israeli embassy official was recorded as saying he wanted to “take down” several British politicians who he deemed unfriendly to Israel. The comments by Shai Masot, described by Israel as a junior embassy…
(JTA) — More than 500 people came to a Reform temple in Tucson to help support Syrian refugees. Temple Emanu-El on Sunday hosted a bake sale for the Arizona Welcomes Refugees group. The pastries were baked by 26 Syrian refugee women, who took home 100 percent of the money raised, Tucson NBC affiliate KVOA reported….
(JTA) — An Amazon employee was fired after allegedly leaving a note in a package for a Jewish customer which read: “Greetings from Uncle Adolf.” The Amazon employee correctly guessed that the woman, who purchased a toy for her niece, was Jewish based on her last name, the Daily Mail reported on Monday. The customer…
As the world’s mandarins prepare for their annual reunion in Davos, Switzerland, the British charity Oxfam is calling attention to income inequality by pointing out that eight billionaires — three of them Jewish — hold as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth’s population. In their ranked list, headed by Microsoft founder Bill…
(JTA) — More than 100 members of the Orthodox National Synagogue in Washington DC traveled to Selma, Alabama, to visit the historic Reform Temple Mishkan Israel. The Reform temple in Selma only has seven remaining members, according to the Montgomery Advertiser. Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of the Orthodox National Synagogue said the purpose of the group’s visit…
Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart’s tech editor and darling of the “alt-right,” the label preferred by contemporary white supremacists, has some advice for American Jews: Change up those voting patterns. “Stop voting Democrat for a start, Jews keep voting for the Democrats,” he said in a talk at Western Carolina University last month. “Progressives care a lot…
Jared Kushner is a father of three in his mid-thirties, ostensibly in line to play an important role in peace negotiations in the Middle East — but to Kushner’s father-in-law Donald Trump, he’s still a boy. “He’s a good boy and he will agree an Israel agreement that no one else would pull off,” Donald…
