WASHINGTON (JTA) — In 1987, Congress passed legislation that declared there would never be an office of the Palestine Liberation Organization on U.S. soil. President Ronald Reagan agreed and signed the law. Seven years later the law was still on the books. But that year the PLO opened an office in Washington — with the…
Lee Harvey Oswald is known as the crack marksman who killed President Kennedy from 88 yards away 54 years ago on Wednesday, but Aron Vigushin, who went shooting with Oswald years before that, was surprised to hear of his friend’s involvement. Vigushin was a 23-year-old Jewish resident of Minsk when he was introduced to Oswald,…
One year ago this week, Sophia Wilansky stood on a bridge outside Bismarck, North Dakota, in a crowd of hundreds of protesters. Wilansky, then 21, had traveled to North Dakota to protest the construction of a natural gas pipeline at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. She planned to stay the winter. Instead, in the early…
In 1983, Kevin Wilshaw visited Dachau with three fellow neo-Nazis. He had traveled to Germany from England, his home country, and visited Hitler’s house and the Nuremberg Stadium in Munich with his German hosts. He asked them to take him to the nearby concentration camp. “They were very reluctant,” he said. They took him, and…
NEW YORK (JTA) — Just who is Bernie Bernstein, exactly? Well, first things first: He — or, more accurately, it — is a disembodied voice that has become a supporting character in the brouhaha surrounding Roy Moore, the U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama who has been accused of sexual abuse by nine women. Earlier this…
When Rabbi Rigoberto Emmanuel Viñas took the helm of the aging Yonkers, New York, synagogue Lincoln Park Jewish Center 15 years ago, the hope was that the Cuban-born Orthodox Jew would breathe new life into the sleepy congregation. And over the following years the strategy seemed to work. Membership swelled, garnering acclaim from the media….
Lenny Pozner says 'new chapter' turned into a nightmare amid harassment by a police detective
A huge Independence Day march organized by far-right, racist forces in Poland came off peacefully Saturday for the first time in years. And this has Jews in Poland more worried than ever. “They’re learning to hide who they are,” said Michael Schudrich, Poland’s American-born chief rabbi. “Don’t ask me if it’s better or worse that…
SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — Lyla Maymon and Jane Shvartzman went to interview officials last year at the Larkin Street Youth, a local organization fighting homelessness among young people, to see if their programs were worthy of a philanthropic grant. Maymon and Shvartzman asked all the right questions, like what percentage of the group’s budget was…
“We’re leading an insurgency movement against the Republican establishment, against the permanent global class in Washington, D.C.,” a combative Steve Bannon announced Sunday in his address at the annual Zionist Organization of America gala dinner. Bannon, the director of Breitbart and the former White House chief strategist, wants the Jewish community to join, depicting the…
The emails started early in the morning one Wednesday in September. The first one pinged into David Myers’s inbox at 7 a.m. “You Can [sic] always resign before protests start and donors are targeted,” the September 6 email read. “Do you want this to be your legacy? I know a tad about pr and shaping…
