JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Executives at Entrata, the Utah company whose founder was ousted last week over an antisemitic screed, called on a local rabbi to help them understand the roots of their former colleague’s bigotry. Rabbi Sam Spector was met by a level of angst and a gift he did not expect on Friday. He left Entrata’s offices…
The former CEO of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, who was recently found to have padded his résumé with fake jobs and professional honors, is resigning from his post at the University of Utah’s Pioneer Theatre Company, citing mental illness. “Despite many good things that have happened over the last two years under my direction,…
When the pandemic scuttled Shira Hofesh’s plans to get married overseas, she did what a growing number of Israelis are opting to do — she got married virtually in the state of Utah. That seemingly simple act has landed her at the center of a case before the Israeli Supreme Court, one that — if…
It’s a mystery some cinephiles may not want solved: Who — or what — placed a towering metal monolith in the middle of Utah desert? On Nov. 18, officers for Utah’s Department of Public Safety discovered the 10 to 12-foot tall edifice, which looks like a stainless steel prototype of Stanley Kubrick’s famously cryptic monolith…
(JTA) — The state of Utah has suspended the use of a service to help first responders and law enforcement after learning that the founder of the company providing the technology has a white supremacist past and was involved in a 1990 synagogue shooting. Damien Patton was 17 and part of a Ku Klux Klan…
(JTA) — A jury in Utah has convicted the former nanny of a Chabad emissary in Salt Lake City of sexually abusing him for about 10 years beginning at age 8. Alavina Florreich, 70, on Friday was found guilty of five counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child and two counts of forcible sex…
(JTA) — A Mormon candidate for a Utah state House seat running against a Jewish incumbent urged residents to vote “in memory of our God” and “our religion.” Todd Zenger, a Republican facing Democratic Rep. Patrice Arent, the state legislature’s only Jewish representative, included those words on a campaign flier. It was widely criticized on…
Earlier this month, Stephen Walt marked the 10th anniversary of his and John Mearsheimer’s book, “The Israel Lobby,” with a column in the Forward. In it, he restated his thesis that “unconditional U.S. support for Israel — the so-called ‘special relationship’ — is not explained by U.S. strategic interests or by shared values, as is…
