JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
After two months of voting and an unprecedented surge in participation, Orthodox and right-wing groups dramatically increased their share of American delegates to the World Zionist Congress, according to the results released Monday. More than a third of delegates will belong to the Orthodox Israel Coalition and Eretz Hakodesh, groups that will push the Congress…
(JTA) — Jewish groups applauded the introduction of a bipartisan bill in the Senate to sanction Burmese officials responsible for the persecution of the Rohingya people. The legislation calls for the United States to take a number of measures in response to the violence against the Rohingya perpetrated by the Burmese government. Sens. Ben Cardin,…
Almost immediately after Heidi Feldman, a professor at Georgetown Law, learned that Donald Trump had been elected president, she decided to make a range of donations to organizations that supported civil liberties. “In addition to supporting more general organizations,” she said, “I thought it was important, with the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-black rhetoric, to…
Ruth Messinger will step down as president of the international development group American Jewish World Service, the organization announced on October 13. Messinger, who has led the organization since 1998, will be succeeded in July 2016 by Robert Bank, the group’s current executive vice president. A former Manhattan borough president and Democratic candidate for New…
The overseas aid and development group American Jewish World Service plans to lay off its community organizing staff two years after announcing a new focus on political advocacy to support its mission. Stuart Schear, the group’s vice president for communications, said that while AJWS was able to raise millions of dollars targeted for overseas aid,…
Francesca Sternfeld and Ruth Messinger / Courtesy of the authors So, imagine sharing a large apartment with someone else who loves life, enjoys good food, cooks well, reads intensively and extensively [but not always the same material] and is not always but often willing to hear about your day or your life and offer wise…
Demonstrators in Nairobi, Kenya rally against wave of anti-gay legislation in Africa. Getty Images. The ancient rabbi Hillel famously asked: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” I feel it is important to answer the first two questions…
The American Jewish World Service called on the Obama administration to pull ambassadors from Uganda and Nigeria because of what it says are escalating anti-gay and other repressive measures by those governments. In a statement, AJWS asked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday to bring ambassadors from those two African countries back to…
