The biggest unsecured creditors in the bankruptcy case of the massive social service charity FEGS Health & Human Services are seeking tens of millions of dollars for a joint retirement plan serving thousands who work for New York Jewish charities. The claims, by UJA-Federation of New York and by a government agency that insures private…
When Marc Daniels sells you his campaign yarmulkes at $10 dollars a pop, it’s not just the religious headgear he wants you to take. What he’s selling, he tells me on the phone, is the Jewish principle of “tikkun olam.” The yarmulkes, which he recently sold at the Iowa caucuses, come in red or blue,…
(JTA) — Every morning, Bernie Sanders would wake up at 4:10 a.m. to pick apples and pears. Leaving the cabin he shared with a few other American college student volunteers, Sanders would have a quick bite of bread before heading out to the orchard. After 2 1/2 hours of work, he and the other 20 or…
It was at the tail end of his encounter with Iowa’s Republican electorate — one day before the state’s February 1 primary caucus — that Donald Trump almost plopped a few dollars of his vast fortune into the communion plate at a church in Council Bluffs, Iowa. That’s the plate meant to catch any stray…
There’s a media mystery developing around the anonymous new owners of the muckraking blog FailedMessiah, and growing signs the site’s harsh criticism of the Orthodox community may be permanently silenced. Shmarya Rosenberg, who ran FailedMessiah singlehandedly for more than a decade, announced February 2 that he was moving on. Days later, questions about the blog’s…
The unfailing response from people when I tell them I’m going to the Jewish farmers conference here, just outside San Diego, is a smile to see if I’m joking. Then, when it’s clear I’m serious, comes: “I didn’t know that there were any Jewish farmers.” There are. And the fact that they were holding their…
David Wichs’ remarkable life of achievement and Jewish compassion started in Communist Czechoslovakia 38 years ago. He came to Brooklyn with his parents, earned a doctorate in math from Harvard and lived in a brownstone on the Upper West Side. He just celebrated his third wedding anniversary. It all ended in a flash on a…
With a mother who wasn’t Jewish, along with his two non-Jewish wives, actor Michael Douglas’s newest part as a Jewish role model sounds at first like a case of nontraditional casting — or a serious case of chutzpah. Nevertheless, the secularly raised eldest child of Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas has just completed his first barnstorming…
It didn’t take long after news broke that Bernie Sanders had volunteered decades ago on a hard-left kibbutz in Israel for right-wing critics to start lobbing ever-scarier adjectives at him. The Democratic presidential candidate’s stint at Kibbutz Sha’ar Ha’Amakim in northern Israel proves to conservatives that he isn’t just a “socialist” but a hard-core Marxist…
Editorial independence at the Las Vegas newspaper purchased by billionaire Sheldon Adelson is being scuttled by his executives, who are meddling with stories about the casino mogul and powerful Republican Jewish political donor, according to a blockbuster report published today in Politico. Adelson purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal in late 2015, initially attempting to shield…
Rabbi Jonathan Spira-Savett became an Internet sensation for a moment, when his Tuesday night question to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton at the CNN town hall event, turned out to produce a rare candid and reflective moment from the former secretary of state. On social media, supporters, and even critics, praised Clinton’s response and Spira-Savett’s question,…
