TEL AVIV — Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination program has become the envy of the world, reaching a third of the population in just over a month. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is already trying to leverage that narrative in his campaign ahead of the March 23 election, Israel’s fourth in two years. But behind that curtain of…
The family of slain journalist Daniel Pearl said the Pakistani Supreme Court judges who ruled to free his killers last week harbor anti-American bias associated with conspiracy theories around Pearl’s death. Pearl’s father, Judea Pearl, told the Forward that the family believes two members of the three-judge panel that voted to free Ahmed Omar Saeed…
(JTA) — The email offered what felt like a lifeline to the dozens of rabbis in the Chicago area who received it last week. “Vaccines are now available for clergy,” an official with the Chicago Board of Rabbis wrote, passing along a link to sign up for a COVID-19 vaccine. Days later, some of those…
(JTA) — Rabbi Stephen Lerner, who as the founder of the New York-based Center for Conversion to Judaism brought over 1,800 students to the practice of Judaism, died on Jan. 27 of COVID-19. He was 80. Lerner founded the program for Jews by choice in 1981. He and his wife, Dr. Anne Lapidus Lerner, an…
Last week, I reached out to Tamara Pearl for a statement while working on a story about Pakistan’s shocking Supreme Court order to release the man who masterminded the kidnapping and murder of her brother, journalist Daniel Pearl, 19 years ago. In our short exchange, I told her to give her parents my best because…
A former employee at Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston filed a suit for employment discrimination in Massachusetts Superior Court Friday, the second such case this week. Matthew Lebovic, the former associate director of campus services, is suing CJP and three of the nonprofit’s leaders for what he alleged in the complaint was disability discrimination and…
One of them married Nicky Hilton, Paris’s sister. Another is an environmental activist in Santa Monica, California who crossed the Pacific Ocean in “Plastiki,” a craft made of recycled plastic bottles. Another tragically died just two weeks ago at age 57. They invest, run business interests, donate generously to a variety of causes, and not…
This is an adaptation of our weekly Shabbat newsletter, sent by our editor-in-chief on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forward’s free newsletters delivered to your inbox. And click here for a PDF of stories to savor over Shabbat and Sunday that you can download and print Even without the pandemic time-warp, it…
Elie Klein and Barry Wendell have little in common other than both being Jews who grew up in Baltimore. Klein is 40, works for a non-profit and now lives in Beit Shemesh, a commuter town halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Wendell is 71, semi-retired and lives in Morgantown, W.Va. But the two men –…
Punxsutawney's synagogue closed in the early 1980s
The White House on Thursday condemned “spurious accusations” after recent media publications implictly accused Palestinian-American and Jewish-American staffers of racism and dual loyalty. “We are appalled by recent spurious accusations against our staff,” Emily Horne, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said. “We welcome oversight and scrutiny, but there is no justification for false…
