Police in Rochester, New York, are investigating the toppling of 21 headstones in the Waad Hakolel Jewish cemetery as a hate crime, said Meredith Dragon, head of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester. “The Rochester police are treating this as an anti-Semitic incident,” Dragon told the Forward on Friday. She also said that she believed…
Updated 10:23 a.m. Federal agents arrested a man Friday morning suspected of making bomb threats to at least eight Jewish institutions in January and February, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has confirmed to the Forward. The man, Juan Thompson, is accused of making the threats as part of a campaign of…
It’s likely there’s never been a safer place to be a Jew than the time and place where I grew up and where I live now, Chicago in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Here, the hardest thing about being a Jew here is finding a decent bagel. That’s a joke, mostly, but it’s…
The projectile that slammed into an Indiana synagogue last weekend didn’t do much physical damage. A photo of the hole in the glass window of a synagogue classroom shows no more than a pockmark in the glass. The intent, however, was to terrify, according to the synagogue’s rabbi. And it comes at a time when…
Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel took his company public today, exceeding expectations for its IPO. The company behind the image-sharing app popular with millennials started trading on the New York Stock Exchange with an IPO price of $17 per share, quickly rising to $24 per share. From La La Land Spiegel attended the prestigious Crossroads school…
In the past year, American Jews have experienced an escalating surge of anti-Semitism, from online harassment of journalists to bomb threats at schools and community centers to desecration of cemeteries. This, sadly, fits into a broader picture of increasing reports of hate crimes against Muslims, immigrants and other minorities. With all the attention paid to…
Abraham Foxman has been delivering a surprising message to Jewish leaders in recent weeks: Stay calm and lay off President Trump. “I’m telling them: ‘Cool it, cool it,’” he said, “But it’s very tough. People are very emotional.” The former national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who had spent a lifetime calling out any expression…
Amid a wave of anti-Semitic threats and vandalism nationwide, one synagogue in southern Indiana was exposed to actual violence when the congregation at Temple Adath B’nai Israel discovered a bullet hole in a Hebrew school window. The development shines a light on a Jewish community that’s right in the heart of what the Indiana University…
“They think Jared can do everything.” A State Department official said Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a high-level White House advisor, has such a sprawling portfolio that he’s starting to usurp the roles of trained diplomats, according to an article by Julia Ioffe in the Atlantic. “It’s reminiscent of the developing countries where I’ve…
The Jewish community is very good at reacting to tragedies when they happen, says Columbia University professor and brain-health journalist Stephen Fried. “But we have to figure out how to make mental health awareness a part of Jewish life every day.” When Sherry Anthony, director of Riverside Memorial Chapel, grew concerned about the number of…
(JTA) — Ami Yunger is used to people sounding surprised when they hear that he and his three siblings all met their spouses at the same summer camp. But he doesn’t think it’s that weird. “Funny enough, I am so used to it that sometimes I think that it is strange when I hear about…
