National

(JTA) — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his candidacy for president in the 2020 election, calling President Donald Trump a “bully.” De Blasio, the mayor since 2014, made the announcement early Thursday morning in a 3-minute video posted on YouTube and becomes the 23rd candidate for the… Read more »

(JTA) — A St. Louis Jewish teen who writes a daily politics newsletter scooped New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s presidential candidacy announcement. De Blasio officially made the announcement early Thursday morning in a 3-minute video posted on YouTube, and followed it up with an appearance on ABC’s “Good… Read more »

BOSTON (JTA) — A fire outside the suburban Boston home of a rabbi that serves at a Chabad center is being investigated as a possible hate crime. Police in Arlington, Massachusetts, have asked for the public’s help in identifying a person caught on a neighbor’s video camera walking away… Read more »

(JTA) — A teenager has turned himself in for punching an identifiably Jewish man in the head in Brooklyn. It was one of two attacks on haredi Orthodox men in the largely haredi Williamsburg neighborhood in less than two weeks. Police are withholding the 16-year-old’s name because he is… Read more »

(JTA) — President Donald Trump granted a full pardon to Conrad Black, the former owner and publisher of The Jerusalem Post who had spent three years in prison for stealing $60 million from his own company, Hollinger International. Black was found guilty of fraud and obstruction of justice in… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — NASA released a photo of what it says is the crash site of Israel’s Beresheet lunar lander. The image taken some 56 miles from the surface of the moon by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on April 22, 11 days after the crash, shows a dark smudge… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — An American administration is issuing dire warnings about a Persian Gulf nation, there’s talk of war and questions about the quality of intelligence. And those who back confronting Iran and those who don’t are citing Israel as a factor. If the Iran war talk sounds familiar,… Read more »

(JTA) — The gunman who killed a woman and wounded three others at the Chabad of Poway told a 911 dispatcher he had done it because “the Jewish people are destroying the white race.” Prosecutors described the call Thursday in announcing 109 hate crime and other charges against John T.… Read more »

(JTA) — Judging by all the media attention, the world loves short Jewish women named Ruth. One of them, Ruth Westheimer — better known as the renowned sex therapist Dr. Ruth — is on the phone to talk about her life and a new documentary about it. But first… Read more »

(JTA) — A Jewish couple in Pittsburgh named their baby girl after Lori Gilbert-Kaye, who was killed in the attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue. Judah and Chaya Cowen welcomed Noa Lea — Gilbert-Kaye’s Hebrew name was Leah — on May 3. She is the couple’s fifth child.… Read more »

POWAY, Calif. (JTA) — “Those who are standing can remain standing,” Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein joked, a nod to the standing-room-only crowd that had packed Chabad of Poway for Friday night services. For many of those who filled the sanctuary, showing up was an act of faith, of solidarity, of… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) –In the wake of a deadly attack on a Chabad synagogue in California, the movement will press for a mandatory moment of silence in American schools, a measure that it claims will reduce violence. In a release Sunday, the Washington-based American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) said chapters… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Trump administration is deploying air and sea strike forces to the Middle East in response to what it described as “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran. It’s not clear what Iranian escalations National Security Adviser John Bolton was referring to Sunday evening in… Read more »

POWAY, Calif. (JTA)— With hundreds gathered to show support for the victims of a shooting inside his synagogue, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein recounted the moment when he came face to face with the gunman and what happened next: He described watching a congregant’s husband, a doctor, faint as he attempted… Read more »

(JTA) — For critics of how the largest social media platforms have handled anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric, it has been a long time coming: David Duke, Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, and their ilk are no longer welcome on Facebook. A statement from a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that several bigoted… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — As a teenager, whenever my mother would suggest watching a Holocaust film, I would groan. I always felt that the Shoah already was close enough. My father had shown me the letters my great-grandfather wrote from a concentration camp in Poland to his daughter, who… Read more »

OSWIECIM, Poland (JTA) — President Donald Trump’s appointee as special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism toured Auschwitz for the first time on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. Elan Carr, who was named earlier this year, was part of the first official U.S. delegation to the March of the Living,… Read more »

(JTA) — On the Shabbat morning of April 27, Hadassah member Lori Gilbert-Kaye was murdered while celebrating Passover at the Chabad of Poway. The synagogue’s rabbi, a male congregant and an 8-year-old girl were wounded as well by the self-avowed white supremacist shooter. We know that anti-Semitism is on the… Read more »

(JTA) — The New York Times editorial board said in an editorial published Tuesday that the newspaper’s publishing of “an appalling political cartoon” is “evidence of a profound danger — not only of anti-Semitism but of numbness to its creep.” The newspaper also acknowledged its own historical contributions to… Read more »

(JTA) — A senior Islamic leader will visit Auschwitz as part of a memorandum of understanding signed between the Muslim World League and the American Jewish Committee. Dr. Mohammad Abdulkarim Al-Issa, secretary general of the Muslim World League, will join American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris at the 75th… Read more »