Updated 4:00 p.m. Rep. Ilhan Omar plans to join the new Congressional Caucus on Black-Jewish Relations, a spokesman confirmed to the Forward on Thursday. Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, had already praised the creation of the group on Twitter. “Last month, [Rep. Jan Schakowsky] and…
Updated 2:50 p.m. A gay pride parade in Washington, D.C. has been criticized by Jewish and LGBTQ groups for banning Jewish and Israeli symbols from its Friday event. The D.C. Dyke March is designed to include people of diverse races, religions and gender identities who feel excluded from the more mainstream Pride parade, organizers told…
A California man carved a giant swastika into his front yard, then claimed he doesn’t know it was a hateful symbol, NBC News San Diego reported. The El Sobrante homeowner, Steven Johnson, asserted that it’s actually a centuries-old Tibetan symbol. It can be clearly seen in an aerial view of his home. “It doesn’t represent…
An Israeli man was charged with aggravated robbery after stealing nearly $8,300 from two banks last month. His weapon of choice was an avocado. The man, who lives in a Bedouin village in southern Israel, targeted two Beersheba banks, The Times of Israel reported. During the first robbery, at a Postal Bank branch at the…
As YouTube cracks down on Holocaust denial on its video platform, it has deleted the account of a prominent anti-Semitism researcher, seemingly in error, the Jewish Chronicle reported. On Wednesday, YouTube said in a press release that it would begin deleting videos from its site that “alleg[e] that a group is superior in order to…
(JTA) — More than 10,000 people marched in Jerusalem’s Pride parade, but 52 were detained or arrested on suspicion of trying to disrupt the event, police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld told the Jerusalem Post. The number of attendees was significantly smaller than last year, when a record 30,000 people participated in the march in support of the LGBTQ community in…
Almost exactly a year ago, Quai James became internet infamous when a video surfaced of him taunting a young Hasidic boy on the streets of Brooklyn. The initial clip, which gained over a million views within its first days of hitting the internet, featured him saying, “I’d be crying if I looked like that too,…
An Orthodox businessman and major Republican donor has funded the printing of 192,000 pamphlets aimed at convincing ultra-Orthodox Jews that they should vaccinate their children, Yeshiva World News reported. Richard Roberts has been an outspoken proponent of vaccination for years; last year, he banned unvaccinated children from the large Purim carnival that he throws each…
A soon-to-open LGBTQ bar in Minneapolis has been the subject of heavy criticism in the local Jewish and gay communities after it was revealed that its owner had written several anti-Semitic Facebook posts. Cheers Minneapolis was scheduled to open at the end of the month during the city’s Pride weekend, but after the offending posts…
(JTA) — Fewer than 150 women turned out for a vaccine education program in Monsey, New York, less than a month after the same hall was filled with many hundreds of men and women for an anti-vaccine symposium. The women’s-only event in Monsey, a Rockland County town with a large haredi Orthodox population, was hosted…
(JTA) — The U.S. Department of Education is investigating Williams College in Massachusetts for discrimination after the student government refused to give a pro-Israel group official status. The department’s Office for Civil Rights in Boston has opened an investigation into a complaint alleging that the College Council, the college’s student government, violated Title VI of…
