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More than 1,500 sign letter calling for investment in ‘re-imagined’ covenant with Jews of color
More than 1,500 people have signed an open letter published Friday that uses the religious language of “obligation” to demand that Jewish groups reserve 20% of board seats for Jews of color and take other steps to increase their representation at a time of national soul-searching about systemic racism. “Judaism is predicated on a covenant…
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Activists want bias training for cops. The ADL provides it. But does it work?
Texas is a famously conservative state, and not known for responding quickly to progressive political movements. Yet the Texas State Police has responded to the Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the country with a commitment to provide every one of their 80,000 officers with “implicit bias training” that helps them identify their own unconscious biases…
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Hasidic leaders are on a chain-cutting campaign to liberate playgrounds
Heshy Tischler is on a mission to open Brooklyn playgrounds closed due to the coronavirus, and the people are on his side. That’s why they keep giving him bolt cutters. He says he’s helped reopen six playgrounds in Brooklyn since last Thursday — the most recent in Crown Heights on Tuesday evening. Three of those…
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Meet the Jewish woman who helped land a major LGBTQ victory
A Jewish lawyer who said her upbringing played a big role in her public-interest career was on the team that scored a big victory for gay rights on Monday when the Supreme Court ruled that federal laws prohibiting discrimination in the workplace also protect gay and transgender employees. “This case, and I feel like a…
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Jews, Christians sue Cuomo and de Blasio for violating religious freedom during pandemic
Five defendants, including three Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn, are suing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General Letitia James and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for violating their civil rights by forbidding religious gatherings and requiring “oppressive conditions” that limit gathering sizes during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the complaint filed last Wednesday….
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Israel’s schools reopen, then some close, leaving parents flummoxed
“Put on your masks,” a security guard instructed backpack-wearing adolescents Sunday morning as they streamed into their middle school in in northern Tel Aviv. They lined up to show him the signed declarations by their parents that they are fever-free. When one maskless boy said he forgot his, the guard shouted, “Anyone have a spare…
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‘You read the Forward backward’: 15 readers recall their dads’ love for our paper (and that joke)
Pat Koch Thaler, whose brother Ed went on to become Mayor of New York, recalled their dad, an Austro-Hungarian immigrant furrier, falling asleep with The Forward on his lap. Their mother, she said, saved “the paper after it was read to put on the kitchen floor after she washed it before Shabbat. “ Richard Hammerman…
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Conference of Presidents’ liberal wing coalesces against Adelson’s ZOA
Sixteen of the 51 members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations have signed onto a letter condemning a fellow member, the Zionist Organization of America, seizing on a moment of national outrage over racism to try to change the tone of the conversation at the umbrella group, which bills itself as…
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Minneapolis Jews are rethinking synagogue security in response to change in their city
The Minneapolis City Council is planning a major overhaul of the city’s police department — maybe even defunding it altogether. The debate has put the city’s Jewish mayor, Jacob Frey, on the hot seat. He says he is opposed to defunding the police, and got booed for saying so at a public rally. Now, with…
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Ultra-Orthodox children hold ‘Kid lives matter’ protest over summer camp closures
Hundreds of Haredi children in Brooklyn gathered in the early evening on Thursday to ask New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and to open sleepaway camps and parks. Videos and photos showed a crowd of children, mostly boys with sidecurls and kippot, walking and biking along Bedford Avenue,…
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Bernard Israel, 90, Longtime Sexton Of Highland Park Synagogue
(JTA) — For more than 40 years, Bernard Israel served as the sexton of Ahavas Achim, an Orthodox synagogue in Highland Park, New Jersey. A man with a booming voice who would stand at the entrance greeting congregants, Israel was known for walking around during weekday prayers rattling a charity box to raise money for…
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