Do ultra-Orthodox Jews celebrate Thanksgiving?
My family celebrates the holiday, but many Orthodox Jews treat Thanksgiving like any other day of the week
My family celebrates the holiday, but many Orthodox Jews treat Thanksgiving like any other day of the week
You won’t see any synagogues driving around Jackson, N.J. But they’re there — at least 15 of them, hidden inside unassuming houses on wooded lots, according to Tzvi Herman, an Orthodox resident of the town. Though invisible to passersby, the synagogues are signs of the sudden growth of the Orthodox community in this spacious south…
A dead pig’s body was found outside the door of a rabbi in the heavily Orthodox township of Lakewood, New Jersey. The body was found on Shabbat, according to The Lakewood Scoop, and the local police department is treating the incident as a bias crime. Pigs are seen as the quintessentially unkosher animal and have…
Police in Lakewood, N.J. arrested an Orthodox rabbi for violating state shutdown and distancing rules, as well as obstruction of justice and resisting arrest, after he hosted a bonfire for the Jewish holiday Lag B’Omer on Monday night. The rabbi, Yisrael Knopfler, is suing the state over the shutdown rules, which he claim violate his…
Lakewood, N.J., is a famously devout and rapidly growing town centered around the biggest yeshiva outside Israel — Beth Medrash Govoha. Its citizens devote their lives to fulfilling the Torah’s dictates, including the one many consider to be the first: be fruitful and multiply. When the onset of New Jersey’s strict social-distancing rules meant to…
More than $15,000 has been raised in three days for the former employee of a Lakewood, N.J. kosher grocery store who died of the coronavirus. Lancelot Diaz-Hernandez, 20, passed away after spending two weeks in the hospital fighting complications from COVID and pneumonia, the Asbury Park Press reported. A GoFundMe page to aid with medical…
(JTA) — A New Jersey man sent Facebook messages to Gov. Phil Murphy and others threatening harm Orthodox Jews for violating state coronavirus restrictions. Anthony Lodespoto, 43, of Howell, was charged Friday with making terroristic threats during a state of emergency, law enforcement officials said in a statement. Lodespoto allegedly used Facebook’s direct messaging feature…
(JTA) — The coronavirus pandemic has spurred anti-Semitic chatter connected to Lakewood, a New Jersey township with a large Orthodox population, on social networks. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy responded by condemning racism connected to the coronavirus. “Scapegoating, bullying, or vilification of any community is completely unacceptable – today or ever,” Murphy wrote on Twitter….