How does a Republican win a citywide race in Democrat-dominated New York City? Court the Orthodox Jews. At least, that’s the argument that supporters of New York City Council member Eric Ulrich are making in next week’s special election for Public Advocate, in which 17 candidates are vying in a nonpartisan election to spend the…
On a recent Thursday afternoon in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, Orthodox Jewish men of all ages were rushing towards 770 Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the worldwide Chabad-Lubavitch movement, for prayers. On their way, a few paused to speak about their frustration over a spike in assaults on Orthodox Jews in the neighborhood…
Two years after Randy Mazie retired, he realized his family had a serious healthcare problem: His wife’s health insurance premiums had reached $1,400 a month. After some online research Mazie, who lives in Miami and used to run transportation for local public schools, found something he thought was a godsend: United Refuah HealthShare, a Jewish…
Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, arrived in Washington to great fanfare in January. But soon after, she began to be criticized in the national media for a 2012 tweet saying that the Jewish state had “hypnotized the world” – a message that many felt echoed age-old anti-Semitic tropes…
On the morning of November 9, Rabbi Bill Kaplan’s phone rang around 4 A.M. The wildfire that had begun up in the hills a day earlier was spreading. Kaplan got in his car and drove up to the camp he runs in the mountains outside Malibu. There were decisions to be made. “We could just…
When “Chaim Greenstein” and his wife realized that they could not have a biological baby together because his wife was too old, they decided to try to find an egg donor, in the hope that a younger woman’s eggs, combined in a lab with his sperm, would create an embryo that his wife could carry….
The men in the back asked for silence, and then one began to read the names of the Iraqi Jews killed half a century ago. There were 52 in all: nine hanged in a public square after a show trial in 1969, the rest disappeared by the secret police. The hangings were a de facto…
Just before 1 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, a 22-year-old man was sucker-punched while speaking on the phone in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. A few minutes earlier, a 51-year-old man nearby was knocked down and beaten. Neither had anything stolen from them. Both were Jewish. The twin attacks, from the same group of three assailants, make…
Two of the most influential people in the country when it comes to American policies toward Israel are a Mormon state representative in South Carolina who used to be an Eagle Scout and a Jewish law professor in Virginia who used to study pirates. You likely haven’t heard of Alan Clemmons or Eugene Kontorovich, but…
Updated February 4 A little over a year ago, Richard Spencer was riding high — a finalist for the Dallas Morning News’ “Texan of the Year” award for his “uncommon negative impact” as a newfangled kind of white supremacist. Yet today, Spencer and his allies in the so-called “alt-right” — a term he coined to…
During a recent Shabbat service here, Rabbi Gershom Sizomu led dozens of worshippers in a prayer for unity. Women sang psalms. Children clapped. Men wearing yarmulkes played drums and guitars. Locally known in Uganda as Abayudaya or “the people of Judah,” they practice Conservative Judaism with an African flair — and right now, need exactly…
