The American writer Ayelet Waldman was on a tour near the Hamra checkpoint, deep inside the Palestinian West Bank, when a silver car with Israeli plates pulled over. The driver, an Israeli Jew, got out and began taking photos of Waldman’s tour group, which included the Austrian author Eva Menasse and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine…
The hashtag #IStandWithSimone took off shortly after the Sanders campaign abruptly suspended its Jewish outreach coordinator April 13. Within hours, hundreds of tweets were posted in support of Simone Zimmerman, who had been hired only days earlier; she had immediately created an uproar when an old Facebook post surfaced in which she used vulgarity directed…
Rabbi Sara Luria wasn’t sure why she was called to participate in a panel discussion on faith and social justice with Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders just 45 minutes before it was to start. Turns out she was a last-minute substitute for Rabbi Andy Bachman, who was scheduled to participate in the Saturday-night Sanders campaign…
WASHINGTON — When Nordea Bank, a large, Stockholm-based financial services firm, got word that it had been blacklisted by the state of Illinois for boycotting Israel, top officials at the company were genuinely perplexed. “It’s strange, very strange,” Sasja Beslik, head of responsible investments at Nordea Asset Management, told the Forward. “I don’t know how…
(JTA) — Even before he was kicked out of Britain’s Labour Party for saying that Israel runs the Islamic State terrorist group, Bob Campbell was a marginal figure within the party. A former forest ranger and first-aid trainer from northern England, Campbell, 49, began his Labour career last year volunteering to help the campaign of…
Imad and Fayzeh Abu Shamsiyeh heard the gunshots reverberate at close range as they were sitting on the porch of their Hebron home, drinking coffee. Quickly, Imad Abu Shamsiyeh went to check on the construction workers who were renovating a section of their home. None of them were hurt. Then, rather than duck inside until…
(JTA) — Simone Zimmerman, the Bernie Sanders campaign’s newly hired national , is quite familiar with the American Jewish establishment. She is used to fighting against it. During the 2014 Gaza war, Zimmerman was one of the leaders of a group of young Jews that held regular protest vigils outside the offices of the Conference…
One of the Jewish businessmen at the center of a reported federal corruption investigation rocking New York politics is the scion of a wealthy and politically-connected California Orthodox family, the Forward has learned. Jona Rechnitz, the 32-year-old real estate developer whose face and name have appeared daily in every New York City tabloid, is the…
Volodymr Groysman is on the verge of making history as the first Jewish Prime Minister of Ukraine, a country firmly planted in the American psyche as a place of anti-Semitism and pogroms. Groysman, 38, is proposing the formation of a new coalition government following the resignation of Prime Minister Areniy Yatsenyuk on Sunday. If Groysman’s…
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders decided to open his busy weekend in New York with a speech outside of the old apartment building that he called home during his first 18 years. The street, off Kings Highway in Brooklyn, where the young Sanders played marbles with his friends is now home to ultra-Orthodox families, and…
(JTA) — In January 2015, Rabbi Marcelo Polakoff was stuck in Buenos Aires when his phone rang. He’d been planning a trip to New York but a storm had canceled all flights, and Polakoff, the rabbi of Cordoba, a province in central Argentina, was cooling his heels at his sister’s house. A woman he didn’t know…
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