About 70 percent of Jews voted for Clinton yesterday, and the election results came as a shock to many. But if you are a parent it’s not only your own feelings you need to process, there is also the daunting question about how to explain all this to your children. CNN commentator Van Jones got…
Scanning the landscape after the votes were cast, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats could find any number of reasons to be disappointed. Exit polls showed that women backed Clinton over Donald Trump by just 54%-42%, far less than she’d hoped and expected. White college graduates, who seemed to be in her column, ended up backing…
People on Twitter are using the hashtag #Kristallnacht to comment on Donald Trump’s election — and not everyone is OK with that. The November pogroms – more commonly known as Kristallacht or Crystal Night – were a serious of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. Paramilitary forces and German civilians burnt…
Like everything else surrounding Donald Trump, his possible choices for cabinet positions are also puzzling and unpredictable. A true outsider, Trump will arrive in Washington with no previous experience in government and with no identifiable circles of advisers and confidants on policy issues. Which leaves Washington insiders completely in the dark, trying to guess based…
The mood is getting strange at Hillary Clinton’s election night party at the Jacob Javits Center, as what was once an easy win seems at risk of slipping away. Clinton supporters are drinking beer in disconsolate groups in the food court in the conference centers’ bowels. As the singer Katy Perry left the stage, the…
When Jeanne Hauck was in the fifth grade, she wrote a letter of protest to her school newspaper. Girls were only allowed to wear dresses at Hauck’s school. She thought that was unfair. So she wrote a letter demanding the right to wear pants. The school relented. Today, some four decades later, Hauck and her…
As the race tightens in key states on election night, the Jewish vote becomes more important in swing states such as Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Though Jews make up a small percentage of the population, over 80% of eligible Jewish voters typically show up to the polls in presidential election years (the average voter turnout…
How does a Forward reporter get a second with the chairman of the Clinton campaign on election night? By getting stuck in a crazy crush of people at Hillary Clinton’s block party, locked out of the Javits Center, running wildly up 10th Avenue, and waiting his turn. The warning signs that the block party outside…
At polling sites in the Orthodox enclave of Borough Park in Brooklyn, many Hasidic Jews expressed support for Donald Trump. On the way to vote after praying at synagouge, they paused to praise the Republican candidate for his controversial immigration plans and enthusiastic support of Israel. Others railed against his opponent Hillary Clinton. “I like…
Since the beginning of the school year, the fifth-graders in Karen Hidalgo’s class at Austin Jewish Academy in Texas have been troubled by the mean-spiritedness of the presidential election. “I feel like at Jewish days schools when we talk about morals and ethics, our current candidates haven’t been wonderful role models in those areas,” said…
At the end of an election filled with divisiveness, Yosef Rapaport didn’t know what to expect when he tweeted that he had dedicated his vote to the American Muslim soldier Captain Humayun Khan — the American Muslim soldier killed in combat whose father Khizr spoke movingly about his sacrifice at the Democratic National Convention. That…
