In the final weeks of 2018, New York’s Orthodox Jewish community went into full-blown panic mode. One Orthodox newspaper in Brooklyn, the Flatbush Jewish Journal, ran the screaming front-page headline “ATTACK ON OUR YESHIVAS!” in red, inch-high letters. “The Jewish people will not bow down or surrender to the wicked, not even before the commissioner…
A top official from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish advocacy group Agudath Israel lobbied the New York Department of Education to remove union teachers from religious schools, the New York Post reported last week. Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, representing a “a coalition of Muslim, Jewish and Christian schools,” reportedly lobbied last month to remove 244 Union Federation…
NEW YORK (JTA) — If you’re an Orthodox Jew with a mortgage from Quicken Loans, you might be in trouble. Agudath Israel of America, a major haredi Orthodox organization, issued a Jewish legal ruling last month prohibiting Jews from taking out loans from the Detroit-based company because it is majority-owned by Jews. Quicken Loans, which claims…
American ultra-Orthodox leaders traveled to Israel this week to tell Israeli officials to ignore liberal American Jews’ demands to allow women to pray at the Western Wall. In statements and documents announcing the trip, the ultra-Orthodox leaders attacked non-Orthodox Jewish groups, saying that while ultra-Orthodoxy is growing, non-Orthodox Jewish movements are “dying,” and that acceding…
While learning in the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, my study partner and I attended a lecture from the great Jewish thinker, Rabbi Moshe Shapiro. Later that week, we saw him at the Western Wall praying with the sunrise. My friend asked him a question on the lecture he had given earlier in the week. Rabbi…
(JTA) — President Donald Trump signed into law a bill to extend disaster assistance by Federal Emergency Management Agency to houses of worship. On Friday morning, Trump signed a two-year budget measure that included the provisions extending assistance. The government had shut down overnight, as lawmakers were unable to agree on the larger budget bill….
The Ultra-Orthodox Community’s Man In Washington Twenty-eight years as vice president and Washington director of Agudath Israel of America have made Abba Cohen a true Washington insider. Now, Cohen is uniquely positioned to reap the fruits of his decades-long labors. While his organization is not aligned with any political party, the Trump presidency has brought…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The third child sexual abuse awareness protest in Brooklyn this year got off to a quiet start. That was actually good news for the dozen demonstrators in front of Borough Park’s Novominsk Yeshiva on this warm fall afternoon. At a previous rally, elsewhere in Brooklyn, an ultra-Orthodox…
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