Jewish students at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design decided to hold a May 11 event at their Hillel building focused on the Palestinian experience of Israeli independence in defiance of what they called “pressure” from Hillel International, according to two students with direct knowledge of the event who spoke anonymously to protect…
Washington – The window of opportunity for running a third party candidate, an option seen as a last hope for some Jewish Republicans, is closing quickly. With state filing deadlines already looming and no candidate seen in sight, the likelihood of a successful outsider campaign is fading and may already be doomed. A broad range…
(JTA) — As narratives go, this one was pretty straightforward. The Obama administration wanted a nuclear deal with Iran. A lot of folks, including Republicans, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, didn’t want the deal President Barack Obama wanted. Obama won. But a profile in the Sunday New York…
HALHOUL, West Bank — Released from Israeli prison, the 12-year-old girl went home to a festive scene in Halhoul, a town outside Hebron in the occupied West Bank. Bouquets of roses and sunflowers greeted Dima al-Wawi, who served two and a half months in an Israeli prison after she was arrested with a knife outside…
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s popularity is rooted in his outsider status, and that’s left Jewish and pro-Israel groups a bit stumped. After all, it’s standard operating procedure for any advocacy organization come election season: Forge relationships with candidates for office from both parties in order to guarantee access and influence regardless of who wins. Jewish…
Commander Marc Buslik was greeted with blank stares as he stood before a group of rank-and-file Chicago police officers, hoping to explain why the federal government was investigating them for unconstitutional policing. “In October of 2014,” he noted bluntly, “Officer Van Dyke decided to pump 16 bullets into Lacquan McDonald.” His shoulders slumped and his…
(JTA) — If there’s one story that sums up the changes afoot on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a once heavily Jewish neighborhood, it’s the saga surrounding the Anshei Meseritz synagogue. The Orthodox shul at 415 E. Sixth St. is a relic of a time when “tenement” synagogues — so named for the narrow…
(JTA) — Never Trump? Always Trump? Never-doesn’t-last-forever-Trump? Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, presents a quandary for Jewish conservatives. He said in December that he doesn’t want Jewish Republican money, and that he would be “neutral” when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians. He walked the “neutrality” back in his speech in March to…
A politically connected Orthodox rabbi has been accused in a federal lawsuit of molesting a student at his Jewish boarding school in New Haven, Connecticut. In a civil complaint filed in federal court in Connecticut on May 3, Eliyahu Mirlis, a former student at Yeshiva of New Haven, accused Rabbi Daniel Greer, 75, the school’s…
America’s biggest Jewish political donor is throwing his support behind Donald Trump. Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino mogul and GOP kingmaker who has been on the fence throughout the rocky 2016 Republican primary, has finally made his mind up. But he doesn’t sound very enthusiastic about it. “I’m a Republican, he’s a Republican. He’s…
Bill de Blasio’s persistent courting of New York City’s Orthodox community has reached a crossroads two years into his mayoral administration. The mayor has lavished favors on the Orthodox, restoring key political goodies that his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, eliminated, and creating major new programs with the Orthodox in mind. Yet for all those gestures, it’s…
