Federal judges tend to have a strict sense of professionalism, commenting on and overruling each others’ verdicts with all due respect. But Richard Posner, the crotchety and loquacious jurist on the federal appeals court in Chicago, had no gumption about bad-mouthing his colleagues – even his fellow Jews — on the Supreme Court. At a…
On October 26, less than two weeks before Election Day, Donald Trump took time out from campaigning to officially open a new hotel of his in Washington. It’s an unusual way to spend several precious hours as they dwindle down, which is what makes the move a strong signal that Trump is already thinking hard…
Republican candidate Donald Trump is now heralded as hero by white nationalists, his promise to “Make America Great Again,” a rallying cry for nativists accross the country. But not long ago, this alliance between Trump and white nationalists would have seemed impossible. Trump was hardly a favorite; some saw him as a selfish mercenary or…
— Conservative rabbis in Cleveland and Chicago have placed a friendly wager on the World Series. The rabbi in the losing city will travel to the synagogue in the winning city to engage in a debate on the Jewish significance of baseball. Rabbi Stephen Weiss of B’nai Jeshurun Congregation in Pepper Pike, Ohio, a Cleveland…
Hollywood billionaire and major Hillary Clinton donor Haim Saban was told that his views on screening Muslim refugees were “not consistent” with the Democratic presidential candidate’s position following an interview in which he advocated “more scrutiny” of Muslims after the 2015 Paris terror attacks. The email exchanges between Saban and vice chairwoman of the Clinton…
One day, Jessye Stein, a computer teacher on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, was trying to persuade a student to return to his Lakota language class when the young man suddenly posed an unexpected question. “He asked me where I come from, where my people come from and what my ancestral language…
When Pat Buchanan ran for president more than two decades ago, attacking gays, feminists, liberals, single mothers in his famous “Culture War” speech, the late political humorist Molly Ivins joshed that the address sounded better “in the original German.” In this strange election season, her quip has traveled the distance from ribbing to reality. For…
High Holiday appeals for money are nothing new to North American synagogue-goers. But for sheer chutzpah, few could compare with the Yom Kippur video appeal from Paula White, Donald Trump’s most visible evangelical supporter. White stares into the camera, with cascading blond hair and Botox-swollen lips. She tells those on her ministry email list that…
Jewish students at the University of Virginia were horrified this weekend after discovering graffiti at a nearby apartment complex. A large Star of David was painted, with the word “Juden” underneath it — German for “Jewry.” For students, the graffiti evoked Nazi imagery. “It’s direct Holocaust imagery and that’s what’s problematic about it,” third-year college…
Reports of anti-Semitic assaults rose dramatically in the past year, particularly on college campuses. And while there may be a tendency to view all critique of Israel as anti-Semitic, a new study finds that at three major universities, politics are not to blame. “The anti-Semitism that is felt on campus isn’t necessarily attached to Israel,…
At a burial shrine set in the rolling farmland of Pennsylvania, a group of Sufi devotees swayed in prayer, chanting the many names of God. The women, heads covered in loose shawls, sat on one side; the men, some clutching prayer beads, on the other. One woman, overcome with emotion, wept openly. At the center…
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