After yet another police killing of an unarmed black man, protesters across the United States are demanding criminal justice reform on behalf of George Floyd and others who have died at the hands of law enforcement. Organizations and activists are mobilizing on several fronts. They’re working to protect the protesters, to reform policing, to change…
The Jews of Los Angeles are not under siege– though some media outlets would have you believe otherwise. Local synagogues, day schools, and Jewish-owned businesses are facing thousands of dollars worth of repairs after vandalism that occurred during the protests over the killing George Floyd. But, officials from the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles and…
What now? The protests following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd have been infused with hope and fraught with danger. They could result in increased justice, or more injustice. Craig Futterman and Adam Gross, two lawyers in Chicago’s Jewish community, are trying to tip the balance toward the brighter side as they tackle the…
A crowd of police in riot gear marched down Crown Heights’ Eastern Parkway one day this week to applause and salutes from some of the neighborhood’s Haredi residents. Another day, amid another Black Lives Matter protest, a Jewish man with side curls offered the throng in Williamsburg a double thumbs-up. Over on Williamsburgh’s Bedford and…
Jason Rosenberg went out Tuesday night to protest in New York City. He returned home Wednesday morning with staples in his head, a broken arm and a summons. A program manager at the 92nd Street Y and an activist with ACT UP, he’s now trying to heal and considering legal action against the NYPD. This…
Updated June 8 The American Israel Public Affairs Committee released a public statement about the killing of George Floyd on Sunday, after more than a week of internal and then public outrage from volunteers and current and former employees over its silence on the issue up to that point. “On the eve of George Floyd’s…
(JTA) — In 1939, 13-year-old Felicia Friedman was ripped from her family and sent to the Płaszow concentration camp outside Krakow, Poland, where she saw the infamous Nazi war criminal Amon Göth kill her 6-year-old cousin. After later hearing another teenaged inmate declare that after all she had witnessed she no longer believed in God,…
On June 5, 1980, Hilda Hay walked into the morgue of Tehran’s Jewish cemetery and saw the badly beaten and bloody corpse of her husband, Albert Danialpour, lying on the table. “Overnight I became a young widow. My young children, who were ages five, seven and nine, lost their father, and we became poor when…
By the time I caught up to the 500 or more people marching in Venice on behalf of Black Lives Matter, they were turning east in front of a narrow traffic island near the Venice Public Library, chanting “No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace!” My iPhone camera caught the whole scene, and it…
James Mackler has been thinking a lot about certain words from the Talmud during his long-shot run for U.S. Senate in Tennessee: “In a place where there are no worthy people, strive to be a worthy person.” They were especially prescient on Monday, after a weekend of nationwide protests against racism and police misconduct sparked…
Read this article in Yiddish “Antifa” is in the air. It’s on President Trump’s lips. It’s trending on Twitter, but it’s not a new thing. Indeed, it has a very Jewish history. It’s an ideology that was born in order to oppose Hitler. “Antifa” is short for “anti-fascist.” It’s so Jewish that one of the…
