(JTA) — Novelist Alice Walker said criticism of her endorsement of an anti-Semitic book is meant to silence her advocacy for Palestinians. The author of “The Color Purple” responded on her website Thursday to a controversy aroused by a feature in The New York Times Book Review Sunday, in… Read more »
National
Defense Secretary James Mattis resigns after Trump announces Syria pullout
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In a letter calling for a policy of treating allies with respect and enemies and rivals with caution, Defense Secretary James Mattis said he would quit his post, days after President Donald Trump launched the withdrawal from Syria of U.S. troops. Mattis in his resignation letter… Read more »
Report: Russian spies sought info on ADL, NCJW leaders
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Russian spies sought information during the 2016 election on leaders of two major Jewish groups, the Anti-Defamation League and the National Council of Jewish Women, a report said. BuzzFeed reported Thursday that the Russian financial crimes agency sought the information under the auspices of a joint… Read more »
10 years ago, the Bernie Madoff scandal rocked the American Jewish world. Here’s how those victims have fared.
NEW YORK (JTA) — Robert Lappin was in Palm Beach when he found out that his charity was broke and his money was gone. It was the same small, moneyed Florida town where he would see Bernie Madoff at the Breakers Palm Beach, the golf resort where both men… Read more »
The Pittsburgh shooting caught the US Jewish community off guard. Can they catch up?
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Eliot Engel, a Democrat who reviles President Donald Trump, and Lee Zeldin, a Republican who eagerly embraces the president, happen to have plenty in common. They are Jewish congressman from New York known for their pro-Israel leadership, and they share a distant relative. They were also… Read more »
Ruth Bader Ginsburg swears in new immigrants, wows them with her story
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The ceremony was cozy formal: Yes there was a color guard and a military band, but the Supreme Court justice brought along her personal trainer, and one of the speakers introduced Ruth Bader Ginsburg as “The Notorious RBG.” The Department of Homeland Security randomly selected 31… Read more »
A new Jewish Christmas tradition: Watching ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ at your local movie theater
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Sick of eating Chinese food and taking in another modern blockbuster on Christmas, while your Christian friends party together with sweets and eggnog? Thanks to the imagination of Greg Laemmle, co-owner of a chain of eight art house cinemas bearing his family name in greater… Read more »
Alice Walker endorses anti-Semitic tract in a New York Times feature
(JTA) — Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Alice Walker has come under intense criticism after endorsing a book by anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist David Icke. In an interview with The New York Times Book Review, Walker — who is best known for her book “The Color Purple,” detailing the hardships of African-American women in… Read more »
In a first, Reform rabbinical school won’t be led by a rabbi
NEW YORK (JTA) —The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion has appointed Andrew Rehfeld, a political science professor who has led the Jewish Federation of St. Louis since 2012, to serve as its 13th president. On Tuesday, the Reform movement’s flagship seminary said Rehfeld would lead its four campuses in… Read more »
Report says fallout of Khashoggi killing could harm unofficial Saudi ties with Israel
(JTA) — The internal political fallout over the murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi may damage Saudi Arabia’s budding unofficial ties with Israel, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The newspaper cited the dismissal of two senior advisers to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who were intimately involved in forging ties between… Read more »
Jewish studies conference celebrates 50 years of explosive growth in the field
BOSTON (JTA) — Diversity and inclusion were among the hot topics at the 50th annual convention of the Association of Jewish Studies, where some 1,200 Jewish studies scholars gathered for a three-day conference that began here Sunday. Fifty years to the month after a handful of scholars in the… Read more »
Noah Klieger, Holocaust survivor and storied journalist, is dead at 92
(JTA) — Noah Klieger, who survived Auschwitz by pretending to be a boxer and went on to a storied career in journalism, died Thursday in Israel. He was 92. As a prisoner in Auschwitz, Klieger was selected for the gas chamber but managed to talk himself out of the… Read more »
American Federations of Teachers building defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The American Federation of Teachers said vandals defaced its headquarters in Washington D.C. with anti-Semitic graffiti. A number of areas around the building, including a wall, were yellow spray-painted on Tuesday and Wednesday with “I want Jexit!” an apparent anti-Semitic play on “Brexit,” Britain’s planned pullout… Read more »
Trump is looking at Jared Kushner as chief of staff, report says
(JTA) — Jared Kushner is being considered for White House chief of staff, according to a CBS News report. Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, would replace John Kelly, who is set to leave the post at the beginning of next year. A real estate developer who had… Read more »
Kirk Douglas honored on his 102nd birthday by NY town where he grew up
(JTA) — The latest honor for Jewish actor Kirk Douglas came in the upstate New York town where he was raised on his 102nd birthday. Friend and relatives gathered in Amsterdam on Sunday to unveil a historic marker for a sign that will say that Douglas, 102, “Rose From Poverty To… Read more »
Ohio man arrested for planning deadly attack on synagogue
(JTA) — A 21-year-old Ohio man was arrested for planning an attack on a Toledo-area synagogue. Damon Joseph of Holland was charged Monday in U.S. District Court in Toledo with attempting to provide material support to ISIS. He told an undercover FBI agent that he was inspired by the… Read more »
At a new yeshiva, students will pray, study Jewish text — and practice yoga
NEW YORK (JTA) — Most Jewish religious schools begin the day with a traditional morning prayer. After that, students spend much of their time studying Talmud, the central text of Jewish law. But at Romemu Yeshiva, set to open next year, students could begin the day with yoga and… Read more »
ID system for asylum seekers in Mexico recalls Holocaust tattoos
(JTA) — Asylum-seeking migrants waiting in Mexico to gain entrance to the United States are having tracking numbers written on their arms in permanent marker, recalling the Holocaust when concentration camp inmates were tattooed with numbers. Accounts vary on when and who started the numbers-tracking practice in Mexico, but… Read more »
George H.W. Bush, a president with a complicated Jewish legacy, dies at 94
WASHINGTON (JTA) – George H.W. Bush, the one-term president whose public grappling with Jewish leaders made headlines while his private interventions helped bring tens of thousands of Jews out of danger, has died. Bush, 94, died Friday at his home in Houston, his family said, less than a year after… Read more »
New Age guru Marianne Williamson talks about her Jewishness and 2020 presidential run
NEW YORK (JTA) — Had she received a better Jewish education, Marianne Williamson says, she might have become a rabbi. Instead, Williamson has become one of the country’s best-known New Age self-help gurus, reaching millions of people over more than three decades in the public eye. She counts Oprah and… Read more »