Nearly 25 years ago I traveled to Poland to participate in the March of the Living, to “study the history of the Holocaust and to examine the roots of prejudice, intolerance and hate,” as the program’s website explains. Our group visited Nazi death camps and Jewish ghost towns, seeking to gain a better understanding of…
On Feb. 6, I was one of 19 rabbis to go to prison to protest the Trump administration’s recent restrictions on immigration and the acceptance of refugees. Organized by T’ruah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, we were the largest group of rabbis to be arrested at one time in American history. Like many American…
(JTA) — The Jewish resettlement agency HIAS has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s temporary ban on refugees. The complaint, filed Tuesday by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union in U.S. District Court in Maryland, alleges that the order violates the Constitution by discriminating against one religion and favoring others….
(JTA) — A Syrian family was reunited with help from the resettlement agency HIAS after the mother and her two daughters were temporarily prevented from traveling to the United States by President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration. Razan Alghandour and daughters, Hanan, 8, and Lian, 5, were reunited Thursday with their husband and father,…
(JTA) — Artist Anish Kapoor was named the winner of the 2017 Genesis Prize. Kapoor was named the winner on Sunday of the annual $1 million prize that has been dubbed the “Jewish Nobel.” He joins Itzhak Perlman, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and actor-director Michael Douglas as recipients. Known as ‘the Jewish…
“He’s a Nazi.” “This is just as bad as the Holocaust.” Outrage like this has seemingly become the norm within American political discourse. Whenever a policy seems crass— or someone sees the specter of fascism— the American public is quick to deem the perpetrator to be Nazi. Since Donald Trump announced his candidacy on the…
On January 31, the Forward published a letter from the leadership of another Jewish organization that directly challenged the position of Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) on the Refugee and Muslim Ban, signed by President Trump on January 25, 2017, which happened to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day. During the 1930s and 1940s, there were…
In our annual progression through the Torah, we are now deep into slavery in Egypt. And each year, around this time, as I read the first Torah portions in Exodus, the same thought occurs to me: Why is all this necessary? By the end of Jacob’s life, he’s back in the Land of Israel, the…
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