A Florida rabbi discovered seven pairs of tefillin at a store that sells the contents of unclaimed airline baggage. Rabbi Uri Pilichowski was on vacation with his family when he visited the store in Scottsboro, Ala., looking for cheap cell phones, the New York Daily News reported. The rabbi bought the religious items, worth hundreds…
A Jewish man being held in an Alabama prison who sued the federal government demanding to be served kosher food has asked a federal judge to grant a transfer to another prison. Rafael Alberto Lloveras Linares, a federal immigration detainee from Venezuela, has asked to be transferred to a facility in Miami or Newark, N.J….
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, known for his defiance of federal church-state separation laws, is under fire for arguing in a speech that the First Amendment only protects religions that worship “the God of the Holy Scriptures,” by which he appeared to mean Christianity. The amendment’s mention of “religion,” Moore said, was meant to denote…
A Jewish man being held in a jail in Alabama has filed a federal lawsuit demanding that prison authorities serve him kosher food. Rafael Alberto Lloveras Linares is a federal immigration detainee from Venezuela. He claims in his lawsuit that he is not being served kosher meals as required by federal law, according to the…
A smalltown Alabama synagogue has lured 20 Jewish families with a millionaire’s offer of $50,000 to relocate there. Temple Emanu-El in Dothan, Alabama, has offered 20 Jewish families $50,000 to move to their town, the Peanut Capital of the World, and help boost the congregation’s dwindling numbers, the Associated Press reported. Dothan, also known as…
Temple Mishkan Israel sits on a busy four-lane road in Selma, Ala. On one side of the temple is a pink house with a bay window; a large white house is on the other side. The paint is peeling on both homes, which look like they’ve sat empty for decades. Across the street there’s a…
Fifty years after a bomb ripped through a Sunday school, killing four girls and rocking a racially divided nation, the city of Birmingham, Alabama, is commemorating the tragedy that led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. “It is a sad story, but there is a joy that came out of it,” said…
Legal abortion could become a thing of the past in a handful of states if anti-choice efforts are successful. Note that I don’t say abortion will become a thing of the past, because the need for abortion will persist, but safe and legal abortion will be outlawed as a spate of new state-level laws curtail…
