A six-foot-tall Hanukkah menorah in Evanston, Illinois was vandalized. The damage to the electric menorah is being investigated as a possible hate crime, Chicago’s CBS Local reported Thursday. The menorah stands outside a facility run by the Chicago Mitzvah Campaign, a Chabad group that provides services to Jewish patients, visitors and staff members of nearby…
CHICAGO — Protests continued in Chicago on Thursday starting with a “die-in” by medical students, a day after embattled Mayor Rahm Emanuel emotionally apologized for the 2014 police shooting of a 17-year-old black teen. Dozens of students of different races laid down in front of City Hall for 16 minutes at the start of the…
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, under heavy criticism for his handling of the fatal police shooting of a black teen, gave an emotional apology on Wednesday, but angry crowds closed city streets to demand his resignation hours later. In a special address to the City Council, the mayor said “I’m sorry” and promised “complete and total…
A Chicago rabbi was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. Rabbi Aryeh “Larry” Dudovitz assaulted the boy when he was supposed to be counseling the teenager for questioning his Orthodox Jewish faith, Cook County Judge Evelyn Clay ruled Monday in the bench trial, the Chicago Tribune reported. Dudovitz, 48, the married father of…
A professor whose tenured job offer was revoked after he posted controversial anti-Israel tweets has reached a settlement with the University of Illinois. The university will pay Steven Salaita $600,000 to drop two lawsuits and “neither seek nor accept employment at the university now or in the future.” The settlement also requires the university, which…
The body of a Lithuanian Jewish woman who died in Germany 78 years ago was exhumed for reburial next to her husband in Chicago. Wednesday’s exhumation of the woman, whose family asked not to be named by the media, was a rare exception to Jewish religious laws that forbid disturbing graves under all but very…
Is God a Chicago Cubs fan? For long-suffering mortal supporters of the Chicago franchise, which has not won a World Series since 1908 (and has not even played in one since 1945), the answer may appear to be no. But Chabad Rabbi David Kotlarsky has faith. He’s been wrapping Cubs fans in tefillin in a…
Michael Kotzin, a longtime top official at the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, has died. Kotzin, who died Sunday after suffering from a serious illness for several years, served the Chicago federation since 1988, most recently as the special consultant to the president and formerly as executive vice president from 1999 until 2011….
