(JTA) – She’s beaten a table tennis Hall of Famer. She’s beaten Jewish philanthropists in suits and high heels. She’s beaten tennis champion Rafael Nadal. And she’s only 15. Like many Orthodox Jewish teens, Estee Ackerman was raised around a basement pingpong table, a traditional gathering spot for Sabbath-observant kids on long Saturday afternoons. But…
Since Donald Trump’s election, Jews in New York have been the targets of more than half the city’s hate crimes, from Williamsburg and Brooklyn Heights to the New School in Manhattan; and all this, amid the sharp spike in reports of anti-Semitic vandalism and hate speech nationally. Yet in the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Borough…
Dan Goldstein is an all-too-common name, as more than one New York law firm found out after one Daniel Jennings Goldstein, a lawyer, heckled Ivanka Trump aboard a JetBlue flight to Florida last week. According to the folks at Shiboleth, a New York based group, their office was inundated with negative and threatening calls and…
Four days into Hanukkah, Brooklyn Rabbi Mendy Hecht discovered two public menorah displays vandalized on Tuesday morning, in what the New York Police Department and Parks Department are investigating as an anti-Semitic hate crime. “Taken out of its place, torn apart, broken. … That’s something more than I’ve ever experienced,” the Chabad rabbi told DNAInfo,…
Jason Dov Greenblatt and his brother Joseph grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Queens, the sons of a diamond cutter. Both went to Yeshiva University, and then on to law school. There, their paths diverged. Today, Jason Greenblatt is poised to become President-elect Donald Trump’s point man on talks between the Israelis and…
Uber driver Noah Forman sailed through more than 200 consecutive green lights during a late-night Manhattan cruise in early December, setting what could be a new record. He posted a video of the joyride online: Forman, 36, started driving a yellow cab in 2006 and switched to Uber this year. He said a friend inspired…
The new White House director of social media is an old hat when it comes to controversy. Dan Scavino, who took over the twitter handle on Friday, authored Donald Trump’s infamous “Star of David” post in July. The message, which was posted to Trump’s social media accounts, featured a photo of Hillary Clinton against a…
White nationalist leader Richard Spencer is speaking out against Jewish activists who have campaigned against his so-called “alt-right” movement in Whitefish, Montana, singling out rabbis and their non-Jewish political allies by using a reference to the Holocaust. “The chief leaders in this case against me were not only not only Jews, in many cases, but…
Carrie Fisher, the iconic actress who died on Tuesday, was far more than the role she’s best associated with, Princess Leia of “Star Wars.” As we commemorate her impressive character as an actress and writer, we’d all do well to look back to her performance in “When Harry Met Sally,” Nora Ephron’s classic rom-com. In…
Updated, 1:40 p.m.: Adds personal details, other film credits, writing career. Carrie Fisher has died at the age of 60, a few days after the “Star Wars” actress suffered a massive heart attack on a London to Los Angeles flight. “It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother…
‘Divines,” by French-Moroccan director Houda Benyamina, is set in the suburbs of Paris. The teenage Dounia and Maimouna know the limits of what the world will offer them and still dare to want more. A story of friendship told with the gravity of a love story, a hymn to hope and to hopelessness, the film…
