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Untold Story of the First Jewish Lynching in America
Late one summer’s night in Tennessee, in 1868, Samuel Bierfield sat in the back of a dry goods store with his black clerk Lawrence Bowman and another black man, Henry Morton. Fists pounded on the back door. A voice demanded that Bierfield open up. Bierfield shouted for the visitors to go around the front, unless…
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Midnight in Tennessee — Footnotes
Late one summer’s night in Tennessee: Newspapers of the day carried many different versions of the lynching of Samuel Bierfield. I chose to rely upon the official report published by George Judd and Joseph Gelray in the “House Journal of the Extra Session of the Thirty-Fifth General Assembly of the State of Tennessee,” Tennessee State…
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It’s a Synagogue, Not a Torture Chamber
The Seesaw is a new kind of advice column in which a broad range of columnists will address the real life issues faced by interfaith couples and families. Read the discussion and vote below for what you think is the best response to this particular quandary. You can email your own questions, which will remain…
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The End of Jew-hannesburg?
On a sunny November afternoon in downtown Johannesburg, Samuel Radebe, a pastor and self-proclaimed prophet, sat on a chair draped in a leopard skin and exorcised demons. One man, rail thin in a tattered yellow shirt, writhed violently in front of Radebe on the floor as his wife shakily explained into a microphone that he…
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98-Year-Old Red Scare ‘Spy’ Loses Bid To Clear Name
(Reuters) — A 98-year-old retired New Jersey math teacher implicated in a Cold War atomic espionage case lost her bid on Thursday to throw out her conviction, which she called a McCarthy-era injustice. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan ruled that Miriam Moskowitz failed to show that recently released records not available to her trial…
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Arson Attack Shatters Idealism at Jerusalem Mixed School
(Reuters) — The Hand in Hand school in Jerusalem presents an almost too-perfect scene in a tense and divided city, where Jews and Arabs do daily business but rarely befriend one other. Classrooms are decorated with pictures of doves bearing olive branches, while pupils from both communities are as likely to greet their bilingual teachers with…
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Hasidic Enclave Keeps Its Secrets Amid Elusive Rebbe’s Tight Control
To his hasidim, Rabbi David Twersky is nearly akin to God. But that does not mean he exempts himself from the obligations God imposes on all Jews, at least as traditionalists understand them. Like his followers, Twersky prays to God three times a day. But unlike other Hasidic grand rabbis, Twersky does not pray in…
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Jerusalem Orthodox Seminaries Refund Girls’ Tuition Over Sex Abuse Scandal
(Haaretz) — Following accusations of sex assault and fraud, four religious seminaries in Jerusalem have agreed to refund tuition to 13 American families. The four girls seminaries — Pninim, Binas Bais Yaakov, Chedvas Bais Yaakov and Keser Chaya, which are located in Jerusalem and have a large number of American students — were sued in…
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Chasing Ghosts, Reviving Spirits: The Fall and Rise of Poland’s Jews
By the fourth day of my weeklong reporting trip to Poland, I was struggling to make sense of the crushing contradictions. I had felt the palpable excitement unleashed by the newly opened exhibit at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, a rich, sophisticated retelling of the Jews’ thousand-year sojourn in Poland, built on…
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Jewish and Palestinian Children Learn Together at Jerusalem ‘Greenhouse’ of Coexistence
Rawan Masalha and Inbar Shaked-Vardi were in their ninth-grade geography class earlier this year when a fight began over the name of their textbook, “Israel: Its People and Area.” “The Palestinian students started saying, ‘Why Israel? Why not Palestine?’ They didn’t want to use the book,” recalled Shaked-Vardi, 14, a Jewish student from western Jerusalem….
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What Does the Madoff Name Mean 6 Years Later?
The name of the most reviled member of the American Jewish community hangs in a place of honor in the lobby of the Center for Jewish History, in Manhattan. In a field of plaques commemorating donors to CJH, one stands out. Below etched lines naming the CEO of the World Championship of Ping Pong and…
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