A day after a Jewish professor’s complaints about being targeted by a left-wing “campus mob” went viral, the college at which he teaches was shut down in response to what the school called a “direct threat.” The nature of the threat that closed Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, was not immediately clear, and spokespeople…
Today marks the end of Shavuot and this Sunday is the Christian holiday of Pentecost. It’s not a simple coincidence that the two holidays fall at the same time. They’re historically — and theologically — linked. What do the sacred days have to do with each other? Shavuot falls on the sixth day of the…
The Portland man accused of aggravated murder in two brutal knife slayings last week called himself a Viking who worshipped Odin. He supported Bernie Sanders before rallying around Trump and vowed to kill supporters of Hillary Clinton. He wanted to wipe away the corrupt American society he saw around himself, but believed he was a…
Liberal synagogues, especially those where rabbis are outspoken about the values espoused by President Trump, are finding that attendance and membership are up – way up – since last November. Call it the “Trump bump.” It’s happening against the backdrop of the long-term trend of shrinking membership in liberal synagogues. In many places it includes…
For over a year now, Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, has been waging an increasingly shrill campaign against billionaire George Soros, using classical anti-Semitic imagery to signal to his listeners that the Hungarian-born American businessman is a shadowy foreign Jew exercising sinister influence over their country. It is an invocation that is deeply ironic on at…
On Sunday May 28, Yeshiva Toras Chaim Toras Emes day school in North Miami Beach received a bomb threat and a faxed demand for $25,000 in ransom. This latest bomb threat made to a Jewish communal target comes over 2 months after Israel’s anti-fraud squad arrested 19-year-old Israeli-American Michael Kaydar on March 23, who is…
On St. Patrick’s Day, 28-year-old James Harris Jackson boarded a bus in Washington and rode it to New York looking for black men to kill. He found Timothy Caughman, a 66-year-old African-American who was scavenging for cans in Midtown Manhattan around the corner from his home. Jackson pulled out a sword and fatally stabbed the…
(JTA) — Try to think of the most famous Israelis in history. Not necessarily the most consequential or “important” ones — like any number of Nobel Prize winners or behind-the-scenes Middle East peace deal negotiators — but those who are most universally recognizable. Most lists would likely include a pioneering role model (Golda Meir), a…
David Arfa’s walks in the woods might seem like an ordinary embrace of the outdoors. But those hikes – on which he leads groups of children – actually form part of a venerable Jewish tradition. Arfa, who lives in western Massachusetts, identifies as a maggid, a religious storyteller common across Eastern Europe, especially in the…
It’s a dilemma many left-wing Jewish activists are facing these days: How should doves deal with President Donald Trump’s pivot to Middle East peacemaking? Can the same activists who fought fiercely against Trump’s election and who oppose almost everything he stands for embrace the president’s effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? “The overwhelming, if not…
Ben Jacobs earned a strange distinction on Wednesday night as he became the first reporter in recent memory to be physically assaulted by a candidate for Congress. Working for the United States edition of The Guardian, Jacobs was body-slammed by Montana House hopeful Greg Gianforte, who erupted in rage after Jacobs asked him a question…
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