With rumors of anti-Semitic rhetoric at Zuccotti Park flying around the blogosphere, roving reporter Jon Kesselman headed to Occupy Wall Street with cameraman Sam Henriques to find out the truth. During the final hours of its pre-eviction heyday they were able to ask the Occupiers themselves what they thought.
The Forward 50 is a snapshot in time, an impressionist picture of the American Jewish story during a given year. But because it’s an annual project, we also can discern subtle transformations in leadership and community over time. The Forward journalists who assemble this list pride ourselves on searching beyond the expected names and faces…
Outside the Eldridge Street Synagogue, it was a regular Sunday on New York’s Lower East Side, as residents and tourists picked their way past stands piled high with Chinese greens and five-and-dime stores bearing signs written in Mandarin. Inside the historic sanctuary, visitors were transported back 125 years to the days when the signs were…
Naomi Alderman is a regular writer for the Guardian newspaper in Britain, a Sami Rohr Prize finalist and, as of this past summer, the first Jewish woman to publish an official novel about Doctor Who, an eccentric British-sounding alien who travels the universe in his time machine — the “TARDIS.” Nearly 50 years old, the…
The Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition is re-opening its search for an artist to design a permanent memorial to the 146 victims of the historic garment factory fire, one of the nation’s worst industrial blazes and a catalyst for major reforms in labor and worker-safety laws. The coalition, a confederation of about 250 groups dedicated…
Jewish demonstrators blasted authorities for clearing the Occupy Wall Street protest, saying Mayor Michael Bloomberg betrayed Jewish values by ordering the late-night raid. ?We are outraged by Mayor Bloomberg?s contempt for the rights of American citizens and his use of public health and safety to justify beating and macing nonviolent protesters,? said Daniel Sieradski, who…
The Forward?s artist-in-residence, Eli Valley, sends everyone?s favorite Jewish turtle on a trip to the Occupy Wall Street protest.
The chimes of Old Main, the clock tower that looms over the campus of Pennsylvania State University, sound different these days: vacant, distant, ominous, as they?ve never been in my previous semesters. They?re no longer a quintessential collegiate timekeeper sheltered in a limestone tower. Now they?re a grave reminder of dark secrets that may have…
The family of a 14-year-old Ohio girl is suing school officials in the state for allowing bullying and anti-Semitic attacks aimed at their daughter. The lawsuit alleges that officials at Green High School did nothing to curb years of bullying by classmates, which included being called a ?dirty Jew? and told she would ?rot in…
In his black T-shirt and first-day-of-basic-training haircut, with weathered skin that betrays his Iranian roots, Idan Mor looks like a typical post-army Israeli. The soft-spoken Mor, however, is anything but. The 32-year-old former paratrooper and Haifa native is making a name for himself as one of the smartest and most original comics on Israel’s alternative…
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes claims to have arrested an unprecedented 89 men on child sex-abuse charges in the ultra-Orthodox communities in Brooklyn over the past two years — but declines to provide any details backing up the numbers or to give the status of any of the cases. Sexual abuse survivors and their advocates…
