(JTA) — New York’s decidedly left-leaning new mayor, Bill de Blasio, was assailed by a group of decidedly left-leaning Jews for a speech in which he pledged his friendship to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Now, a prominent right-leaning Jewish activist is coming to de Blasio’s defense. In an open letter to de Blasio,…
A group of New York Jewish public figures have signed an open letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio condemning his recent proclamation that the pro-Israel lobbyist group AIPAC would always have a friend at City Hall. The letter counters the idea that AIPAC represents the best interests of de Blasio’s New York constituents, including the…
While an abandoned suitcase on a Tel Aviv street corner is often cause for panic, when Yosef Halper saw a vintage leatherette travel bag on his commute home from his bookshop a few years ago, he turned around to investigate. “I used to be a compulsive garbage examiner,” he joked. Inside, he discovered a “collector’s…
A huge collection of letters, manuscripts, religious artifacts and photographs belonging to one of the leading rabbinical authorities of 20th-century America will be put up for public sale on Wednesday in Jerusalem. The entire archive of Rabbi Eliezer Silver (1881-1968), who served for decades as the head of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in both…
British actor and comedian Stephen Fry urged on Wednesday that Russia should be banned from hosting the Winter Olympics due to its repressive policies against gays and lesbians, the Mirror reported. In an open letter to British prime minister David Cameron, Fry compared the victimizations of homosexuals Putin’s Russia to the treatment of Jews in…
A single, anonymous letter was the focus of attention as dozens of board members met in New York from around the world at the annual meeting of the organization responsible for allocating billions of dollars in Holocaust restitution funds. The 2001 letter, which warned of a fraud that went unheeded and that turned out almost…
A letter handwritten by Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish soldier who was wrongly convicted of treason in 1894, was sold at auction for nearly half a million dollars. The sale went through even after a Dreyfus heir urged the seller to give the letter to a museum instead. The letter, which Dreyfus sent from prison…
A letter written by Alfred Dreyfus, a French-Jewish soldier who was wrongfully convicted of spying, is expected to fetch at least $130,000 at an auction in Paris. The letter will be sold at auction next month by Sotheby’s Paris branch. Dreyfus, a captain who was cleared of accusations that he spied for Germany, sent the…
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