Carolina Kuperstein is the only Jewish kid at her school in Florianópolis, an island city of about 500,000 in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, so the 13-year-old’s idea of a typical bat mitzvah comes not from her classmates, but from American movies. “They show all the joy and happiness in Jewish tradition, and…
Esawi Frej, one of two Arab ministers in Israel’s coalition government, met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last week to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Frej, a member of the left-wing Meretz Party, which is determined to pursue a two-state solution, had little news to report on that front. The new government wants to…
Just two days before the deadline to act on legislation for the year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 101 into law. The measure will make ethnic studies a graduation requirement for California’s public and charter high school students. Friday’s signing marks the end of a contentious chapter in California politics, even as questions still…
This is an adaptation of Looking Forward, a weekly email from our editor-in-chief sent on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forward’s free newsletters delivered to your inbox. I’ve been pregnant twice. I’ve had two abortions. And I have two healthy, wondrous children who recently turned 14. I used to frame my…
Chloe Levian, a senior at the University of California, Los Angeles, has only been back on campus a little over a week, but she has already added an additional stressor to her workload: handling anti-Zionism on campus. “Israel’s definitely a divisive topic here. The department statements have just made it very difficult to want to…
The news would have been shocking — if it were true: Nike, the global sportswear behemoth, had aligned itself with Palestinian activists and would stop selling its products in Israel. A move like that would represent one of the most significant wins for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists to date, and easily eclipse Ben &…
Mark Zuckerberg “likes” the Bay Area Jewish community. The Facebook CEO, along with his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, have turned their philanthropic eye toward Jewish communal life, from day schools to summer camps and more. The result: $1.3 million in new grants to 11 Jewish organizations, most of them in the Bay Area. The gifts…
Babi Yar may be the world’s deepest whodunit: Who killed some 34,000 Jews in just 48 hours on September 29 and 30, 1941, in this unexceptional park 15 minutes from downtown Kyiv? And who proceeded to murder a total of 100,000 people in this leafy spot, not only Jews, but Roma, Communists and psychiatric patients,…
Long before Mike Feuer announced his candidacy for mayor, the Los Angeles Jewish community — a force in both local and national Democratic politics — thought highly of the city attorney. Born to a Jewish family in San Bernardino about two hours east of L.A., Feuer has for decades been active in Jewish affairs. He…
Two progressive Jewish groups have joined a coalition calling on financial giant Fidelity to stop facilitating donations to right-wing organizations, including one that bankrolls Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. .@Fidelity must disclose their role in enabling anti-Palestinian violence globally. Millions are flowing from Fidelity and into orgs like Central Fund of Israel, a…
Much is at stake — perhaps even the stability of the new Israeli government — in the race to head the Jewish Agency for Israel, the largest Jewish global nonprofit. And some of the contestants hope that winning the job, once held by former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Soviet dissident Nathan Sharansky, will…
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