The conviction and lynching of Leo Frank a century ago galvanized the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. Today, the centenary of Frank’s murder trial is galvanizing neo-Nazis. A slew of anti-Semitic websites, some professionally designed and purporting to be balanced online archives with URLs like leofrank.info and leofrank.org, are seeking to attract curious researchers…
The World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division has financed NIS 400,000 worth of infrastructure work in the West Bank outpost of Negohot, even though the work was carried out without building permits. Negohot, located in the western Hebron Hills, was built on the ruins of an army outpost in 1998. Over the years, the Housing Ministry…
Finchley Road, which stretches across London’s northern suburbs, is one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares. Day and night, cars crawl along it, passing supermarkets, furniture stores, a popular multiplex and, lately, a vast construction site for a new project now nearing completion. What’s about to be unveiled here is broadcast loud and clear by the…
I haven’t taken a survey on this, but I feel pretty confident that the secret shame of photo archivists is that drawer full of unidentified images — the “orphans,” in archive speak. Photos that stubbornly refuse to reveal any hint of who might be in them, where they may have been taken and, most important,…
“Continental,” which premiered at this year’s South by Southwest Festival, in Austin, Texas, bills itself as “a documentary about the infamous NYC bathhouse” where a brash unknown named Bette Midler, accompanied by a Jewish pianist named Barry Manilow, once entertained towel-clad gay men. But it’s really the story of an unlikely sexual revolutionary named Steve…
1913 •100 years ago King of the Horse Poisoners Sings Joseph Tablinsky is known on Manhattan’s Lower East Side as the “king of the horse poisoners.” Not long ago, Tablinsky was in court, about to get sent up to Sing Sing on a 10-year stint. He made a deal with the judge to reveal everything…
A federal judge’s recent decision barring discovery to 31 adults who say they were sexually abused as students at Yeshiva University High School for Boys years ago bodes poorly for the plaintiffs’ case, say two legal experts who have been following the case. The August 6 decision by United States District Judge John G. Koeltl…
A jewelry thief has reportedly struck four times this summer in a luxury Park Ave. building that is home to many prominent Jews, making off with more than $100,000 in baubles. The New York Post reported that the thief or thieves has stolen rings, watches and other jewelry from apartments at tony 740 Park Ave.,…
Until just a few days ago, William Rapfogel was considered New York Jewry’s poverty czar, and his deep connections to the city’s political class were viewed as one of the prime assets of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, which he long headed. Rapfogel’s abrupt firing amid the disclosure of a criminal investigation into his…
For the first time since 1983, the United States Supreme Court is taking on a case that could overturn its long-held approach to deciding when government-endorsed prayer in the public square violates the Constitution. The case, which involves an upstate New York town whose legislative meetings opened with prayer invocations that were given almost exclusively…
A week after her mother died, my friend called with an unusual request. “Can I borrow the black ribbon you used when Rod died?” Though she had been given one at the funeral, she had misplaced it amid the confusion of the shiva. “I want to keep wearing it,” she explained. “If I remember correctly,…
