Rabbi Moshe Twersky, murdered in a bloody Jerusalem terror attack on November 18, bore the last name of one of the most illustrious families in Hasidic Europe. But he also was the “truest disciple” of his grandfather, Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, the founder of Modern Orthodoxy in America, Twersky’s brother-in-law told the Forward. Twersky, the…
Kehilat Bnei Torah was supposed to be in a safe place, even in the most contested of cities. The synagogue where two Palestinian terrorists killed four worshippers in a gun-and-knife bloodbath is in the picture-postcard West Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof, miles away from the tense seam line that divides the Holy City. “I am…
In the past 50 years, armchair theorists have accused numerous prominent Victorians of being the Whitechapel murderer. Here are the most outrageous suspects. Lewis Carroll The anagrams of sentences in Carroll’s books described the killings in detail, Richard Wallace argued in his 1996 book “Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend.” King Leopold II of Belgium The…
The names of Jack the Ripper’s victims would have certainly been long forgotten had they not been murdered by the same hand. Mary Ann Nichols The mother of five was an alcoholic whose husband had left her seven years before her death in her early 30s. Nichols walked the streets the last night of her…
It was October of 1990, and the Nazi hunters at the United States Department of Justice were furious at the FBI. The Nazi hunters, led by an attorney named Neal Sher, were tasked with finding and deporting former Nazis and other World War II-era persecutors. They had just tracked down a former pro-Nazi propagandist named…
Was Jack the Ripper, one of the most notorious murderers of all time, and the subject of more than 125 years of ongoing investigations into his identity, Jewish? This allegation, as old as the crimes themselves, was given new life with the publication in September of Russell Edwards’s book “Naming Jack the Ripper,” the latest…
An Orthodox Jewish man who was stabbed in his neck in Antwerp in a suspected anti-Semitic attack was released from the hospital. The victim, identified as Yehosha Malik, 31, sustained injuries classified as moderate on Saturday morning in the capital of Belgium’s Flemish Region, the Gazet van Antwerpen reported. He was discharged that day after…
Forward reader David Wexler calls my attention to an article in the October 10 issue of this newspaper about Greg Wall, a saxophone-playing, shofar-blowing, Talmud-teaching rabbi from Norfolk, Connecticut. “In addition to being a Talmud khokhem, or smart man,” the article’s author, Jon Kalish, wrote, “Wall… knows a mainsail from a jib, having taught at…
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…
America’s top government official dealing with anti-Semitism warned Jewish communities in Europe could be put in danger if current trends remain unchanged. Ira Forman, speaking at the end of a conference for members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on countering anti-Semitism, told the Forward on Friday that the threat of rising…
After sounding a collective oy vey over the Republican landslide, Jewish communal activists began looking for ways to make lemonade out of what they perceive as lemons delivered by voters in the midterm elections. Hopes of liberal-leaning activists to see comprehensive immigration reform, voting rights legislation or increased funding for safety network programs have been…
