Last fall, officials with a shadowy Israeli government agency started knocking on the doors of America’s leading Jewish institutions. They came offering money with few strings attached. They wanted American Jewish institutions to help them fight the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement by running “missions” to Israel for influencers, something some of them were doing…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — An internal correspondence document written by a senior member of Israel’s Rabbinical Courts rejects the authority of all rabbis who receive their ordination from a yeshiva located in New York. The document, obtained by Itim, a nonprofit that guides Israelis through the country’s religious bureaucracy, shows that despite the haredi Orthodox-dominated Chief…
NEW YORK (JTA) — Emily Schorr Lesnick and Jamila Humphries always knew that Judaism would play a part in the life they wanted to build together. But experiences with Conservative Jewish institutions had made the couple feel less than welcome. Schorr Lesnick, 28, remembers encountering homophobia at her Jewish Conservative summer camp. Humphries, 29, who…
(JTA) — Novelist Michael Chabon delivered a diatribe against Jewish inmarriage, as well as Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, in a commencement speech to newly ordained Reform rabbis. Speaking to the graduating class of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles on May 14, the author of acclaimed novels including “The…
Hundreds of current and former students and parents signed a letter in support of a controversial moment of silence at Manhattan’s elite Beacon School for Palestinians killed during Gaza protests. The letter, which had gained about 200 signatures according to one organizer with a child in the ninth grade, came more than a week after…
NEW YORK (JTA) — One of this city’s largest hospitals has accused a Hasidic group that visits sick patients of lying about the hospital’s policy to limit access by volunteers to patient floors and rooms. Dr. Andrew Brotman, senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs at NYU Langone Health, said a claim by…
Brooklyn Orthodox leaders backed Sen. Simcha Felder in his increasingly nasty feud with Democratic leaders, branding party bosses “wild animals” after they moved Wednesday to back his primary opponent and kick him out of the party. Boro Park Orthodox leader Yosef Rapaport said Democrats and Gov. Andrew Cuomo will only drive Jewish voters away by…
Michael Cohen’s use of his Trump Organization email to conduct his taxi business has become more legally significant after his former medallion manager, Evgeny Freidman, agreed to work with federal prosecutors as part of a plea deal, according to experts and reports. That’s because public records obtained exclusively by the Forward show that Cohen used…
Cynthia Nixon will have to address some hot-button statewide issues like funding and oversight of yeshivas if she is to make inroads with more religiously conservative and Orthodox Jewish voters, leaders and experts told the Forward. Nixon, who is raising two Jewish sons and belongs to pro-LGBT synagogue Beit Simchat Torah, announced in March her…
Laura Moser hopes to ride a wave of progressive voters to victory in a suburban Houston congressional district Tuesday, while her opponent is making outreach to disaffected moderates her main calling card. The down-to-the-wire primary race between Moser and attorney Lizzie Pannill Fletcher is one of several high-stakes primary battles that between those who want…
Syrian troops fought on May 20 to crush the last pockets of resistance by Islamic State militants trapped in an enclave south of Damascus, state media said, denying a report that insurgents had begun leaving in a withdrawal agreement. The recovery of the enclave south of Damascus would mark another milestone in President Bashar al-Assad’s…
