Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of former U.S. president Barack Obama and his relationship to the Jewish community.
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News Rabbi Shlomo Riskin’s ‘Obama Is Haman’ Rant Reflects Growing Israeli Anger Over Iran
(JTA) — For years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has compared Iran to the biblical Persia, the ancient kingdom where the Jewish people were nearly annihilated through the evil designs of the arch-villain Haman. But when an American-born rabbi, widely seen as a religious moderate who built one of the most innovative Orthodox synagogues in…
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Breaking News British Jew Quits Race After Suggesting Israel ‘Do Eichmann’ on President Obama
A Jewish candidate for the British Parliament has withdrawn after suggesting that Israel should “do an Eichmann” on Barack Obama. Jeremy Zeid of the United Kingdom Independence Party, or UKIP, quit his campaign on Thursday in response to the blowback to a Facebook post in which he suggested that Israel should “[k]idnap the bugger” and…
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Breaking News 79 Democrats Urge President Obama To Keep Pushing for Two-State Solution
Seventy-nine Democratic members of Congress told President Barack Obama that he should “persevere” in his efforts for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a letter sent to Obama on Tuesday, the lawmakers wrote that they were concerned with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pre-election comments “dismissing the possibility of a two-state solution” and appreciated…
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Breaking News Rabbi Shlomo Riskin Backs Off ‘Obama Is Haman’ Rant
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin reversed his earlier comparison of President Obama to the biblical villain Haman, saying that Iran — not the president — is comparable to the ancient enemy of the Jews. In an interview Wednesday, Riskin, the American-born chief rabbi of the West Bank settlement of Efrat and the founder of New York City’s…
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Opinion Between Obama and Netanyahu, It’s Personal
So the tension between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu isn’t personal. That’s what the president said during his March 24 press briefing. Those of us who favor close U.S.-Israeli relations can breathe a sign of relief. Or start seriously worrying, depending on your viewpoint. On one hand, if it’s not personal then we needn’t…
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Breaking News Jewish Democrats Ask President Obama To Lighten Up Rhetoric in Feud With Benjamin Netanyahu
Some Jewish House Democrats called on President Barack Obama to tamp down the rhetoric against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. The Congress members issued the demand last week at a meeting with deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, Politico reported Sunday. The meeting was the latest in a series of regular briefings that Rhodes…
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Breaking News Rabbi Shlomo Riskin Compares President Obama to Haman
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, a prominent American-Israeli Orthodox rabbi, compared President Barack Obama to Haman, the villain of the Purim story. Riskin, the longtime chief rabbi of Efrat, a West Bank settlement in the Gush Etzion bloc, made the comparison during a speech at the Jerusalem Great Synagogue, The Jerusalem Post reported. “The president of the…
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Opinion John Boehner’s Double Standard on Bibi — and Obama
In case you missed it: The No. 1 best comedy line of the weekend came from one of our best deadpan straight men, House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio. It came during a Sunday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” They were talking about the Israeli prime minister’s flip-flop on…
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Culture How a son of Holocaust survivors joined a commune and helped to free ‘Hurricane’ Carter
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Fast Forward Why the Weitzman, a museum of American Jewish history, tapped an Israeli as its next CEO
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