The dovish Israel lobby J Street is considering endorsing bills that would put conditions on American military aid to Israel, the organization’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami told the Forward on Tuesday. In an exclusive interview, Ben-Ami told the Forward that J Street will deliberate over the next few weeks about whether to advocate for bills that…
New York City is experiencing the largest measles outbreak in recent history, but the state of emergency Mayor Bill de Blasio called earlier this month was limited only to ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The first case was reported in Brooklyn in September, and as of last week, more than 300 cases have been confirmed — and…
For twenty years, two very different communities have been meeting on the corner of Marcy and Division avenues in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Ultra-Orthodox Jews go there to find cleaning ladies; Latina immigrants to find work. Gloria Puma, 35, is one of the latter, an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador. One morning almost exactly four years ago, her…
The Trump administration left major liberal Jewish organizations off its invitation list for a mysterious White House meeting scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, but invited three officials from the hawkish Zionist Organization of America, the Forward has learned. The meeting, the existence of which which the JTA first reported on Friday, comes amid speculation that the…
Three generations ago, before the Holocaust decimated European Jewry, tens of thousands of students studied at more than a thousand secular Yiddish elementary schools dotted across Eastern Europe. Today, there is only one secular Yiddish school in the world, and it’s in south Australia. Next year, that could change, and in a dramatic way: Secular…
WikiLeaks director Julian Assange is currently in police custody in London awaiting possible extradition to the United States, after spending almost seven years inside the Ecuadorian embassy. He is being charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion in connection with Chelsea Manning’s leak of more than 750,000 American military and government documents. Assange is one…
In the popular imagination, ultra-Orthodox Jews shun the modern world. They live and work in tight-knit enclaves in Brooklyn or suburban New York and New Jersey, fiercely protect their autonomy over their religious schools and do not participate in the defining technology of modern times: the Internet. But while this picture is true for many…
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In a White House where no secret is safe for long, one development has remained stubbornly confidential – the contents of a Middle East peace plan authored by President Donald Trump’s advisers Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt. With Trump having delighted Israelis and angered Palestinians by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in…
The public outcry over measles in New York City is reaching a fever peach after Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency in heavily ultra-Orthodox zip codes in Brooklyn on Tuesday, making vaccination mandatory for unimmunized people. De Blasio said that people who refuse to get vaccinated could face fines. “This is the…
The headlines seem to come every couple of days. A Jewish cemetery vandalized in Massachusetts. “Die, Jew Bitch” scrawled across Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s face on a poster in Brooklyn. Swastikas littering a playground in Queens. Swastikas sprayed on the door of a Democratic Party headquarters in Oklahoma It’s hard to know what…
Stephen Miller is not shy about his hardline stance on immigration. Currently he’s directing an overhaul of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with plans of enacting harsher immigration policies. The Jewish aide, best known as the face of the controversial travel ban last summer, recently said he’d be “happy” with no new refugees — despite…
