JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Editor’s note: We have republished this story, originally published in 2017, for Presidents Day. In August 1790 President George Washington took a trip to Rhode Island, the last state to have ratified the Constitution (Washington had skipped it on a tour of New England the previous fall). One of the locals who greeted him was…
Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old National Youth Poet Laureate, shot into the spotlight instantly after she recited her powerful poem “The Hill We Climb” for Joe Biden’s inauguration. Her words, her Prada headband and her “Hamilton” references all drew chatter online; she tweeted that she is a big fan of the musical about the nation’s founding….
As soon as George Washington proclaimed the first Thanksgiving holiday in 1789, some American Jews embraced the tradition right away. Gershom Mendes Seixas, considered by some to be American Judaism’s first public figure, was only 23 years old when he was appointed in 1768 as the cantor of New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel (at the…
Here’s a Chicago fun fact: You know that statue on East Wacker Drive at Lake Street, right in front of the river, of George Washington with two random colonial guys? Well, the one on the right is Haym Salomon, a Polish-born Jew who funded Washington’s army by negotiating foreign loans at rock-bottom interest rates and…
(JTA) — A death threat was among the anti-Semitic graffiti found on the Georgetown University campus in a public restroom next to the campus Jewish center. The graffiti was discovered Saturday morning next to the Makóm Jewish gathering space in the Leavey student center of the Washington, D.C., school, The Hoya student newspaper reported. The…
The president of George Washington University has reportedly apologized to a college student who threatened legal action after he was reprimanded and ordered to remove a Palestinian flag from his dormitory window. GW president Steven Knapp removed a disciplinary action against Ramie Abounaja, 20, and called the student to personally, he wrote in a statement…
A George Washington University student is threatening legal action after the college told him to remove a Palestinian flag from his dorm room — but the college insists it is simply enforcing rules about window decorations. Ramie Abounaja, a Palestinian-American pre-med student, says George Washington discriminated against him when it made him take down the…
George Washington University has canceled the suspension of a student who displayed a swastika on the bulletin board of a campus dormitory. The student, a member of the predominantly Jewish fraternity Zeta Beta Tau, said he had hung the swastika in order to educate his fellow students about the symbol’s meaning of auspiciousness and good…
