(JTA) — If all goes well for Jacob Steinmetz, he could run into a kosher food problem in the near future. Steinmetz, a 17-year-old pitcher from suburban New York with a blazing fastball, made history on Monday as the first Orthodox Jewish baseball player to be drafted by a major league team. The Arizona Diamondbacks…
When Janet Howell learned that her old coach, Arnold “Arnie” Notkin, was among the missing in the Surfside condominium collapse, memories of a difficult childhood in Miami Beach came flooding back. In those days, Miami Beach was more strongly associated with trouble than with glamour, and her parents, Honduran immigrants, were among many in the…
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In Portland this month, the daytime temperature reached 100 degrees. In Seattle, 111. Between June 26 and July 6, approximately 800 people died of heat -related causes in the Pacific Northwest. Hundreds more have died in extreme floods in Europe. No extreme heat or cold temperature event on record has come close in terms of…
Blake Gailen didn’t always have the strongest connection to Israel. But now, the outfielder’s journey has him set to represent the country in the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. Gailen’s love of baseball came from his parents, who were avid fans of the sport and turned their son onto the game at the age of three. He…
This article originally appeared on Alma. I spend way too much time scrolling through the endless loop of viral challenges and 60-second dance videos on TikTok (don’t ask me why). It was during one of those daily scrolls that I came across Hadassah Tirosh’s page. I’d be lying if I said her Jewish-sounding name wasn’t…
The questions were tucked toward the end of a lengthy poll of American Jewish voters: do you agree, the Jewish Electorate Institute asked respondents, “that Israel is an apartheid state?” Do you agree that “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians?’’ Released Tuesday, the poll appears to be the first time Jews in the United…
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has reportedly concluded its investigation into the actions of a teaching assistant who asked in a tweet last Nov. 15 if she could lower the grade of “Zionist students” because of their support for “ethnic cleansing.” But the university has not disclosed its findings nor replied to those asking what…
After a year of a global pandemic that has sickened and isolated millions of people under lockdown, Stacey Prussman proposes a unique recovery program for New Yorkers. “I want to bring fun back into New York City,” Prussman, a longtime Jewish comedian from Brooklyn, said in a recent interview. Art, culture and food is what…
Tahija Vikalo is a Muslim woman who lived on one side of a duplex in a Philadelphia suburb and befriended the Jewish woman who lived on the other side. Together in 2017, Vikalo and her neighbor, Nancy Nagel, joined the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, an organization that builds trust and relationships between Muslim and Jewish…
