(JTA) — Joan Micklin Silver, a pioneering female filmmaker who directed two of Hollywood’s most Jewish films, has died at 85. The cause was vascular dementia, according to The New York Times. Silver was best known for directing “Crossing Delancey,” the Lower East Side rom-com involving a pickle maker, and “Hester Street,” an influential low-budget…
(JTA) — Israel has vaccinated about 8% of its population against COVID-19, while the United States has vaccinated less than 1%, according to data reported by the two nations. Israel’s Health Ministry said Thursday that the country had beaten its target of 150,000 daily inoculations for the second straight day. By Thursday, nearly 800,000 of…
Jewish Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff pointed out — several times — on Wednesday to Fox News that Sen. Kelly Loeffler has been keeping company with a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. Loeffler is the incumbent Georgia senator locked in a tight race with Rev. Raphael Warnock; Ossoff is running against the other incumbent,…
(JTA) — Jared Kushner’s family real estate business wants to raise at least $100 million in capital through Israel’s bond market, according to papers filed near the end of his tenure as President Donald Trump’s main Israel and Middle East adviser. The Wall Street Journal, which reported the news first on Tuesday, said Kushner Cos….
Laura Loomer, the right-wing political activist and failed Florida congressional candidate, has lost her case against the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Southern District of Florida ruled Wednesday. Loomer, along with her company, Illoominate Media, had sued the Muslim civil rights group under the accusation that they had conspired…
Thanks to a $162 million dollar loan, a construction project on the former site of Beth Hamedrash Hagadol, one of the oldest synagogues in Manhattan, has begun moving forward. Beth Hamedrash Hagadol was the first synagogue founded by Russian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side. It stood for nearly 170 years, from 1850 until…
Jonathan Pollard, the U.S. Navy Intelligence analyst who spent three decades in jail as a spy for passing classified intelligence to Israel, has arrived in the Jewish state — where he has long said he wanted to live Pollard and his wife, Esther, landed at Ben Gurion Airport outside of Tel Aviv in the early…
In Israel, as in the United States, haredi Orthodox communities have been hard hit by the coronavirus. Now new data from the Israeli Ministry of Health shows that one in 132 haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, adults in Israel over age 65 has died from the coronavirus, compared with one in 475 adults over 65 among the…
Bernie Sanders’ signature cranky Brooklynite affect is getting a big workout on Tuesday as the senator, an independent from Vermont, leads the Democrats’ effort to put Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a very tough position. That Sanders and the Democrats can press McConnell at all is thanks to President Donald Trump, who started talking…
(JTA) — The former U.S. ambassador’s residence in Tel Aviv sold for $67 million in July, according to an Israeli tax record made public on Monday, the highest price ever for an Israeli property. The sale helped cement the embassy’s controversial move to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv authorized by President Donald Trump while also recognizing…
(JTA) — A federal court of appeals ruled that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s capacity limits on houses of worship in areas with rising COVID-19 cases constituted a violation of religious liberty. The ruling on Monday comes after a Supreme Court injunction last month blocking Cuomo from enforcing the rules until the lower court could…
