Synagogues in rural Iowa are few and far between for good reason. Out of almost three million residents in the 26th largest state, there are no more than 6,000 Jews, and almost half of them them live in the capital, Des Moines. So few Jews live — and die —in Iowa that the Jewish Funeral…
A teacher’s aide at a Pittsburgh Jewish day school area and her pediatrician sister were murdered in their home by single gunshots to their heads, authorities said Sunday. Susan Wolfe, 44, who worked at Hillel Academy in the upscale Squirrel Hill neighborhood and her sister, Sarah Wolfe, 38, had “other injuries” but those injuries did…
What possessed a small-town Jewish immigrant family to defy the demands of the anti-Semitic corporate owner of their car dealership franchise? And not just any corporate owner, but Henry Ford Sr. In 1916, my grandfather, Max Barish, along with his brothers and father, opened a Ford dealership in Sioux City, Iowa. The business provided them…
Columbia University has joined an effort to have restrictions removed from a decades-old scholarship offered only to white students. The Lydia C. Roberts Fellowship, established in 1920, requires that Columbia students who receive funding must be from Iowa, must not study law or several other fields, and must return to Iowa for two years after…
Two Iowa sisters were fired from their jobs after joking about “burning the Jews” inside a toy oven. Christina and Susan Ott were dismissed from an assembly plant in New Hampton, Iowa, in January, the Des Moines Register reported , after walking around work on Dec. 19 with a toy oven in which they placed…
Following Hurricane Katrina, donations poured in from concerned folks all around the country hoping to help make things better. They came in all sizes, with big bucks coming from the usual suspects: Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, Amaco and Talia Leman. Talia Leman? At the time, Leman was a 10-year-old fifth-grader who lived in Waukee, Iowa, two…
Democrats fighting an uphill battle to win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives are trying to use rural angst over the failure of congressional Republicans to pass a farm bill to win some Midwestern seats in the Nov. 6 election. The farm bill, which sets subsidies for everything from crop insurance to milk…
Remember the Iowa caucuses? Well, there’s a new winner in Des Moines. Republican Rick Santorum claimed a delayed-reaction victory after a final count showed him ahead of frontrunner Mitt Romney by 34 votes. The original count on the January 3 election night showed Romney on top by 8 votes. But certified results found Santorum received…
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