Elga Khananyeva, 28, stole from her family to buy heroin. Vladimir, 32, started dealing drugs at age 14, two years after he arrived in the United States. Dmitry, 25, shot heroin five times a day before spending three years in rehabilitation. “I can’t get upset every time someone dies anymore,” Dmitry said. The words “opioid…
This Rosh Hashana, Rabbi Adam Spilker delivered what he said was his strongest sermon ever as a spiritual leader. His congregation, a veteran Reform synagogue of more than 600 families in Minnesota, had recently signed on to a new campaign organized the Reform movement to ramp up political and social activism amidst the culture wars…
Political hopeful Paul Nehlen began his move into the “alt-right” this past fall. First, he was just toying with the internet subculture’s memes and catchphrases and praising white nationalist groups. But by Christmas he had gone full anti-Semite — retweeting white supremacist slogans and reading an author known as the “Neo-Nazi movement’s favorite academic.” It…
Roy Moore loves his many attorneys. On Thursday, a whole gaggle of them got another 15 minutes of fame as he sued the state of Alabama to block the certification of Doug Jones as a United States senator. On December 12, Jones beat Moore in a special election. If you’re reading this, you’ll remember that…
Updated, 4:23 p.m.: Adds details about Steve Bannon’s break with Paul Nehlen. Paul Nehlen, a business executive running for Congress, spent the morning after Christmas being anti-Semitic on Twitter. He went too far even for one-time ally Steve Bannon, who’s famous for putting President Donald Trump in the White House and for turning Breitbart into…
Groups of men in white Tyvek jumpsuits with bright-red stains over the crotch could be seen all over the country this year. They waved eye-catching signs — “Stop Cutting Baby Penises,” “Foreskin Is Not a Birth Defect” — from Miami to Minneapolis to Hollywood. The group, Bloodstained Men & Their Friends, is part of the…
NEW YORK (JTA) — Trivia is having a major moment — and that’s thanks, in large part, to Scott Rogowsky. The Jewish comedian has played a huge role in the runaway success of HQ Trivia, the iPhone app turned massive phenomenon that now has some 500,000 people glued to their iPhones at 3 p.m. and…
Cliff Adler is the son of two German Jewish refugees. He is also co-president of one of the world’s largest Christmas ornaments business, a company founded and run for over half a century by those same refugees. So what’s the first thing in the company’s showroom that he wants to show off to a reporter…
At the end of a meeting with President Donald Trump this fall about the Middle East peace process, attorney Alan Dershowitz turned the conversation to a matter closer to home: The prison sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, the Kosher meatpacking executive then serving a 27-year prison sentence for bank fraud. Rubashkin, whose kosher meat firm AgriProcessors…
An overview of the controversial case that divided the Jewish world and sent a religious businessman to jail. Who is Sholom Rubashkin? Sholom Rubashkin is a Jewish, religious 57-year-old husband, father of 10 and businessman. He was the chief executive of Agriprocessors, a kosher slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. He’s served eight years…
What is Agriprocessors? Agriprocessors was the name of the kosher slaughterhouse and meatpacking factory in Postville, Iowa, owned by Sholom Rubashkin. Purchased in 1897 by Aaron Rubashkin, who passed down the company to his sons, Heshy and Sholom Rubashkin, the company eventually became the largest kosher meat-packing plant in the United States. Agriprocessors’ history of…
