A New York rabbi tweeted on Wednesday that Jews cannot be considered indigenous in any land, prompting a debate on Twitter over the meaning of indigenous identity and whether Jews can claim it. His tweet hit a nerve among Jews, some of whom tie their connection to Israel to extensive historical evidence of continuous Jewish…
As a national reexamination of monuments and memorials of flawed heroes moves along, the University of Southern California has accelerated its own efforts, aimed at past leaders whose credentials may appear ugly in the spotlight of today. Prominent among potential targets: racists. Not so prominent: anti-Semites, a fact that has many on campus concerned. Already,…
The Zionist Organization of America has filed a grievance against fellow members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, pushing back against its critics at a time when discord is testing the conference’s self-appointed role of representing the breadth of the Jewish community. The right-wing ZOA, which is financed by the casino…
The Orthodox Union, the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, the Union of Reform Judaism, the Anti-Defamation League and Yeshivah of Flatbush are the Jewish groups that received the largest loans from the Small Business Administration’s Payroll Protection program, according to data released this week by the SBA, the federal body responsible for distributing loans…
Every day, people get their just desserts when the Internet exposes past transgressions for all to see. While public apologies are common, not everyone takes time to grapple with wrongdoing. Ryann Milligan did. In early June, photos emerged of Milligan, a 21-year-old junior at Penn State majoring in rehabilitation and human services, posing with a…
The New York Jewish Week, the largest Jewish communal newspaper in the world’s largest Jewish community, announced Tuesday that it was winding down its print operations and would move to an online-only model in August. The announcement, made by the president of the board of directors, Kai Falkenberg, and Editor-in-Chief Andrew Silow-Carroll, said that the…
(JTA) — Over the past 35 years, Rabbi Stanley Michaels taught hundreds of boys how to put on tefillin. Michaels was an integral part of life at London’s Mill Hill Synagogue, where he organized Sunday morning breakfasts in honor of the synagogue’s bar mitzvah celebrants. He was renowned for his singing voice, which would fill…
A group of Jewish and Muslim women, including the city’s only female rabbi, have defiantly come together to remove antisemitic graffiti which appeared overnight on a wall in Billesley in Birmingham, transforming it into positive art depicting a rainbow. Determined to show they’re “stronger together,” the women joined forces after vile and abusive words of…
Kat Morgan led her last Shabbat service inside San Quentin State Prison on March 13. At one point during that service, and her co-leaders divided the congregants into small groups to share things that bring them joy during darker moments. “These people are experts in resilience,” she said. “They shared gratitude for things like prayer,…
In the early 2000s, Jessie Kornberg worked on homelessness and children in poverty issues in New York City. After law school at UCLA and clerking for a federal judge in Memphis, she returned to Los Angeles and founded, Ms. JD, a non-profit supporting women law students and lawyers. Later, she became a trial attorney with…
Neshama Carlebach knows what its like to take heroes off their pedestals. “I know now the value of pain and being able to look inside,” she said. “What began as the greatest moment of loss in my life, I now see as a rising, and in that rising I can find my real voice.” As…
