South Florida retirees are turning their local country clubs into an unlikely battlefield in the fight over Israel. Following global security provider G4S’s announcement in March that they would be severing all contracts with Israel, retirees responded in kind, and at least seven local country clubs say they are considering terminating their decades-long relationship with the…
Tuesday’s primary races in five states left Bernie Sanders once again facing the question he’s been avoiding for weeks: What next? Hillary Clinton, with victories in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware, has now passed the 90% mark on her way to winning a majority of delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination. Sanders’ path to…
Dozens of Arab families who were planning to build homes in the Jewish city of Afula have lost their leases to the land after an Israeli judge said that they illegally coordinated their bids. Last November, hundreds of Jewish residents of Afula protested the prospect of Arab neighbors after Arab families won tenders to build…
Some of America’s most influential Jewish organizations apparently have no problem with a letter sent in their name seeking leniency for convicted felon Sheldon Silver, the former New York State Assembly speaker awaiting sentencing on corruption charges. Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, used Conference…
The nation will be watching tonight to see if Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump can win big in five states holding primary votes. But the pro-Israel community will be keeping a special eye on one toss-up U.S. Senate primary in the state of Maryland. Vying to fill the seat being vacated by Senator Barbara Mikulski,…
As a Dutch Jewish couple hiding separately from the Nazis, Emmanuel Joels and Hetty van Son were literally drawn together by a comic book of Emmanuel’s romantic invention. After narrowly avoiding deportation to Auschwitz thanks to a policeman’s tip, the young couple spent 2 1/2 years living less than a mile apart, each in the…
The scene captured by the surveillance camera shows an ultra-Orthodox man trying to force himself on a young boy in the narrow entrance of an apartment building. It happened last month, on Purim, in the Israeli town of Bnei Brak. Within a few hours, the footage was posted on Facebook. Almost immediately, the assailant was…
Jewish leaders are standing by their old friend, disgraced former New York State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, even after his conviction on charges of fraud and extortion. Silver was an important and powerful benefactor for the organized Jewish community during his decades in power in Albany, and now prominent Jewish communal leaders are pleading for…
If the mystery buyers of the muckraking anti-Orthodox website Failed Messiah aimed to silence the online airing of Orthodox dirty laundry by shutting down the site, their plan has backfired. The controversial, aggressive, sometimes unfair and utterly indefatigable writer behind Failed Messiah, Shmarya Rosenberg, announced in February that he had sold the site to an…
In Boro Park, Brooklyn, there are two police forces. One drives cars with flashing lights, is dispatched over walkie-talkies, and has a blue-and-black shield for a logo. The other is the New York City Police Department. The Shomrim security patrol, as the local civilian force is known, is in part a pastime for traditionally observant…
Did Bernie Sanders’s harsh criticism of Israel cost him the New York Jewish vote? Or perhaps the turmoil over his firing of his Jewish outreach director on the eve of the vote? Neither, say campaign insiders. It was Hillary Clinton skillfully playing good old-fashioned politics, the kind in which voters align with candidates they know…
