(JTA) — Teachers in a Texas school district were told last week that a new state law requiring them to present multiple perspectives about “widely debated and currently controversial” issues meant they needed to make “opposing” views on the Holocaust available to students. NBC News obtained an audio recording of the official, the Carroll Independent…
(JTA) — A Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Georgia canceled a fundraiser that was set to be hosted by a film producer whose social media account prominently displayed an anti-vax symbol in the shape of a swastika. The producer, Bettina Sofia Viviano-Langlais, was set to host a fundraiser for Herschel Walker, a retired…
(JTA) — Contestants on an episode of Jeopardy that aired Wednesday night were stumped when presented with a photo of chulent, a stew traditionally cooked over the course of Shabbat. The clue, for $400 in the “Sabbath” category: “Exodus 35:3 bans doing this on the Sabbath, hence the Jewish dish, ‘chulent,’ which can go on…
(JTA) — When Elana Johnson was shopping for a synagogue three years ago, the mother of four approached a Conservative congregation in Lincoln, Nebraska, to ask about joining. For most synagogues, such an inquiry would have been a no-brainer. But Johnson had elected not to circumcise her three sons, departing from one of Judaism’s most…
(Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle via JTA) — As Pittsburgh approaches the three-year anniversary of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, the city will play host to a high-profile new effort to find a global bipartisan response to rising tides of hate. The three-day, in-person Eradicate Hate Global Summit, which will be held in the city Oct….
(JTA) — A Jewish man who asked for a new trial on the grounds that the judge who sentenced him to death was antisemitic will be granted a new trial. Randy Halprin, 44, was originally set to be executed on Oct. 10, 2019 but won a stay from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after…
(JTA) — In April, the language-learning app Duolingo added its 40th language to its program arsenal: Yiddish. A couple of decades ago, it would have been unthinkable for a mainstream non-Jewish language program to offer an expansive, comprehensive course in Yiddish. But Duolingo’s Yiddish addition only serves to reflect the increased global interest in learning…
(JTA) — After the remains of a notorious Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi were interred last week in the burial plot of a German-Jewish music scholar who died before the Holocaust, the church that oversees the cemetery is looking into moving the neo-Nazi’s ashes to rectify its “terrible mistake.” Henry Hafenmayer, a neo-Nazi known for denying…
CARACAS, Venezuela (JTA) — The Champlain Towers building collapse in Surfside, Florida, impacted a range of communities whose members lived in the diverse Miami-Dade area: immigrants from across Latin America, Jewish retirees from the Northeast, Jews from Puerto Rico. One of them still feeling the most pain months later is the Jewish community of Caracas,…
(Cleveland Jewish News via JTA) — Jim Fleischer, a Canton, Ohio native who served as CEO of the historic Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi since June 2018, died from cancer on Saturday. He was 52. In a statement posted on its website, AEPi said, “Jim fought a courageous battle against cancer for the last three…
The leading candidate to head the largest Jewish global nonprofit withdrew from the race Tuesday. Now the competition for the prestigious position is wide open. Elazar Stern, the minister of intelligence services and the government’s candidate to be the next executive chairperson of the Jewish Agency for Israel, ignited a controversy over the weekend after…
