(JTA) — Joyce Fienberg was a dedicated worshipper at the Tree of Life Congregation, the Pittsburgh synagogue where she was among 11 killed Saturday by a lone gunman. “My mom would be very angry that her funeral wasn’t able to be at Tree of Life, and that her friends lost Saturday couldn’t be here,” her…
A Brooklyn street was found vandalized with swastikas on Wednesday morning. Sandy Maltzman, senior producer at CNBC, tweeted a photo of a home on her block in Brooklyn Heights, which was defaced with five sloppily drawn swastikas. “Today was the day I woke up to swastikas on my beautiful block in Brooklyn Heights,” she wrote….
Days after 11 were killed in a mass shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue, identified as a hate crime, the National Rifle Association returned to its dog-whistling tactics that many consider to be anti-Semitic. The NRA’s official Twitter account wrote, posted an NBC article speculating that Jewish megadonor George Soros will spend more money on the…
I had many great honors in the years I served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel. But the single hardest part of the job? The many funerals and shivas I attended. Often I was visiting after a horrific terrorist attack took innocent lives. Sometimes it was to mourn Israeli soldiers who fell in battle. Less painful,…
A Jewish school in Pittsburgh boasts one of the city’s landmarks: a Holocaust memorial sculpture, created by an artist from 6 million aluminum tabs that the students collected over almost five years. When the Community Day School dedicated the sculpture, called “Keeping Tabs,” the feeling was that such an elaborate effort was necessary to help…
Within hours of the October 27 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Muslim-American activists sprang into action. Tarek El-Messidi, founding director of the faith-based nonprofit Celebrate Mercy launched a “Muslims Unite for Pittsburgh Synagogue” campaign on LaunchGood, a Muslim fundraising website, with the goal of providing for the short-term needs of…
Around the time my relationship with my now-wife Rachael took a turn for the serious, we went for a hike in the desert and talked about religion. Rachael is Jewish. I am Catholic. Rachael’s Jewishness was mostly cultural. (Holiday recipes, yes! Holiday services or prayers, absolutely no!) By contrast, religion in all forms has always…
President Trump last spring pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative commentator and filmmaker who pleaded guilty in 2014 to making illegal campaign contributions. D’Souza has been criticized even by fellow conservatives for his frequently racially-charged public output, such as his decision to criticize former president Barack Obama’s use of a selfie stick by tweeting, “You can…
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