(JTA) — A century ago, on Aug. 18, 1917, a massive fire roared through the Mediterranean port city of Salonica, Greece, then home to the largest and most dynamic Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jewish community in the world. According to local legend, the fire erupted one Sabbath afternoon amid World War I when the coals of a…
Among the Igbo, a large ethnic group in Nigeria, there is widespread identification with Jews and Israel. But a recent genetic test carried out by an American missionary group searching for “Jewish roots” came back negative — prompting fierce backlash from activists who called the project faulty and irresponsible. Amidst waves of social media outrage…
Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson, the three most famous Confederate heroes, have hundreds of memorials and monuments in public spaces throughout the United States dedicated in their memory. Judah Philip Benjamin, the most significant Jewish political figure in the United States during the 19th century — often called the “brains of the…
Randi Weingarten has held leadership position in teachers unions for almost three decades, but in the coming school year she faces perhaps the most daunting challenge of her career. The 2016 election resulted in an administration whose views are almost diametrically opposed to everything Weingarten, as head of the American Federation of Teachers, believes in….
With Steve Bannon officially out of the White House, some insiders say controversial deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka could be next on the chopping block. Multiple White House officials are saying that Gorka’s fate is up in the air now that his boss, Bannon, has been ousted by President Trump, according to reports from Tthe Daily…
The Queens Museum canceled and then re-instated a celebration organized by Israel’s mission to the United Nations amid a passionate discussion about the boycotts, divestment and sanctions movement. The museum decided in the end to hold the event – intended to mark the 70th anniversary of the U.N. resolution that led to the creation of…
In the days leading up to last Saturday’s Unite the Right rally, the Jews of Charlottesville sensed that the march might put worshippers gathered to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath in danger. They asked the police to provide them with an officer during morning services and were refused, so they hired an armed security guard. They…
President Donald Trump responded to the news of brawls at a white supremacist rally in Virginia by condemning violence “on many sides.” The language was oddly vague — and celebrated by his white nationalist base. “He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us,” wrote Andrew Anglin, the…
Charlottesville mayor Mike Signer’s first encounter with anti-Semitism was in elementary school. In a speech earlier this year, he recalled hearing his “first hurtful ethnic slur” at the minority-majority public school he attended in Arlington, a wealthy Virginia suburb outside Washington, D.C. But nothing prepared the 44-year-old Democratic mayor of a liberal Virginia college town…
There are some things you might expect from a SlutWalk — an annual march designed to bring attention to sexual assault and “rape culture.” You would expect participants to show up in fishnets and tutus and pasties, carrying protest signs and chanting things like “My dress is not a yes!” You would expect that the…
Rabbi Tom Gutherz had a harrowing weekend as the senior rabbi at Charlottesville’s Congregation Beth Israel, founded in 1882. Holed up in a church across from Emancipation Park, the site of the infamous white supremacist rally, he said the day’s events were unlike anything he had ever seen. “To see the marching, to hear it,…
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