In what may be one of Jake Tapper’s Jewiest tweets ever, CNN host Jake Tapper and former Mets and Phillies player Lenny Dykstra got into a discussion of the weekly Torah portion on the social media network. Just the common occurrence of a former star member of the @Phillies telling me that this week’s parsha…
New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is doubling down on her insistence that former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel not be chosen to serve in President-elect Joe Biden’s administration after reports he was under consideration to be secretary of transportation. Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter, “What is so hard to understand about this? Rahm Emanuel helped cover up…
(JTA) — A San Francisco-area school district is taking action after Jewish students faced anti-Semitic harassment on social media for the second time this term. Jewish students in the Tamalpais Union High School District said accounts on Instagram and TikTok followed them and posted offensive messages, including posts that denied the Holocaust, discussed rape and…
Joe Biden is set to name Janet Yellen secretary of the treasury, according to multiple reports on Monday. She would be the first woman in the role and the third Jewish treasury secretary in a row, after President Trump’s choice Steven Mnuchin and President Obama’s second term pick Jack Lew. Yellen, 74, has already made…
A Florida Holocaust museum that also explores modern social problems as part of its mission is attracting criticism for a new exhibit inspired by the police killing of George Floyd, and the unrest that followed. The Holocaust Memorial and Education Resource Center of Florida’s Uprooting Prejudice: Faces of Change Exhibit, features portraits taken by a…
Police seized two pots of marijuana plants from the courtyard of a historic synagogue in Medanos, a small village in the Buenos Aires province. Medanos, once the rural home of about 100 Argentine Jews, is in the Villarino district. Villarino Mayor Carlos Bevillacua said the synagogue was not responsible in any way for the marijuana…
President-elect Joe Biden announced the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas, a Latino Jew who has emphasized the heightened threat facing American Jews, as his Homeland Security secretary on Monday. Mayorkas, 60, the deputy secretary of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, was born in Cuba to a Cuban-Jewish father and Romanian Jewish mother. His mother survived…
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib expressed concern Sunday that President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for Secretary of State might try to silence her criticism of Israeli government policy. Biden tapped longtime diplomat Tony Blinken for the role. “Just make sure he doesn’t try to silence me and suppress my First Amendment right to speak out against Netanyahu’s…
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is calling on Mayor De Blasio to investigate reports of a Hasidic wedding with thousands of guests held earlier this month on November 8. The wedding would have been held just weeks after another prominent Satmar wedding was publicly called off amid a backlash over convening guests during the pandemic, members of…
(JTA) — Jewish groups in Quebec are expressing dismay after the province announced a plan to allow small gatherings at Christmas but said gatherings during Hanukkah would remain prohibited. The plan would permit Quebecers to have gatherings of up to 10 people per day for four days in late December, in a concession to the…
The State Department will work to identify groups that support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement in order to stop funding them due to the alleged antisemitic nature of BDS, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. is committed to countering the Global BDS Campaign…
