Freed Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard will be making his debut performance in front of major Jewish leaders next week — and has already won a fight to get a more Shabbat-friendly electronic monitoring bracelet, the Forward has learned. Pollard, who was released from prison in November after serving 30 years of his life sentence, will…
George Weidenfeld, a Holocaust survivor who famously repaid the debt of honor to those who saved him by bankrolling the rescue of Christians from Islamic State, has died at 96. The Jewish publishing magnate credited Christians with helping him escape the Nazis and went on to build one of the most influential publishing houses in…
“A mensch with chutzpah.” These were the yiddishisms that Republican Jewish Coalition board member Abbie Friedman deployed when he introduced Donald Trump at the group’s candidates forum last December. It was, in part, an effort to ease the palpable discomfort of wealthy RJC donors with the brash billionaire who would be president. The problem, though,…
An abandoned Brooklyn synagogue controlled by two rabbis with checkered pasts is being eyed for possible use as a halfway house for federal prisoners. The rabbis, brothers Abraham and Sroya Sorscher, were the subjects of a November 2015 investigative report in the Forward. Now, locals in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn are pushing back…
A group of American and Israeli LGBTQ Jews that was scheduled to appear at the largest conference of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer activists in the United States this week has been booted from the event because of pressure by anti-Israeli activists, the group says. U.S. nonprofit A Wider Bridge, which builds connections between…
A storied New York Orthodox synagogue, just blocks from the Empire State Building, is looking to its future, but says a report that it may build a gleaming 19-story ‘SynaCondo’ is wrong. The – Congregation Beth Israel was founded by immigrant German Jews in 1890 on Manhattan’s W. 35th Street, around the block from its…
A mom of six was stabbed to death in her West Bank home by a terrorist who escaped capture. Dafna Meir, a gynecology nurse, was set upon in the doorway of her home in the West Bank settlement of Otniel Sunday. Her attacker reportedly fled to the nearby Palestinian village of Khirbet Karameh, and the…
As the families of five Americans held in Iran celebrated the news that their loved ones have been released and are on their way home, relatives of Robert Levinson were faced with a harsh realization. “We are happy for the other families. But once again, Bob Levinson has been left behind,” family of the Jewish…
Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz was hailed as “one of the world’s greatest young philanthropists and businessmen” by broadcaster Larry King after the California nursing home owner won an award in 2012. Rechnitz briefly seemed destined to win even bigger kudos this week when it was reported that a nurse at one of his facilities had scored…
Mr. Hooper was a Yiddish-speaking Jew, but the show's Jewishness hardly ends with him
A 56-year-old nurse at a southern California nursing home thought she scored a slice of the big prize after the facility’s Jewish owner bought thousands of tickets for employees — but it turned out to all be a hoax. The nurse’s son told her she was one of three winners of the giant $1.5 billion…
