National

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Donald Trump says he’s ready to meet Iran’s leadership without preconditions. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seems to have preconditions. The disconnect of recent weeks was sharpened Monday when the White House announced the reimposition of sanctions on Iran, the first to be reintroduced since… Read more »

EFRAT, West Bank (JTA) — Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee laid bricks in a new neighborhood in this settlement in a ceremony Aug. 1 that took its language and cues from Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” rhetoric. During the ceremony in Efrat’s Tamar neighborhood, organizers distributed red caps bearing… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — If you scroll down the Twitter feed of Jacob Wohl, former teenage hedge fund manager and current pro-Donald Trump provocateur, you’ll see a stream of insults directed at Robert Mueller, liberals and a proposed plastic straw ban. And that was just Friday morning. To his… Read more »

  NEW YORK (JTA) — Cantor Philip Sherman gives me a call after having finished two circumcisions before noon on Tuesday. That’s a light day, he explains. On Thursday, he will be performing circumcisions for four baby boys; on Friday, he’ll do five. Sherman, 62, is a mohel (in… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — David Kustoff, running for re-election in Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District, had three things in his favor: incumbency, a solid Republican district and President Donald Trump’s endorsement. Kustoff was not taking anything for granted, though: In the Republican primary on Thursday, he faced a challenger, George Flinn,… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — “We are Q.” Those wearing shirts and holding signs bearing the idiom and similar Q-related expressions appeared prominently at President Donald Trump’s campaign rally Tuesday in Tampa, Florida, for a Republican congressman, Ron Desantis, prompting confused and concerned reactions from across the political spectrum. What is… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Over and over, across decades and cities throughout the United States, sociologist Steven M. Cohen painted a picture of American Jews using a consistent set of questions. How much do Jews love Israel? How many Jewish friends do they have? Do they attend a synagogue?… Read more »

(JTA) — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she hopes to remain on the court for another five years. “I’m now 85,” Ginsburg said, according to CNN. “My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five… Read more »

TEANECK, N.J. (JTA) — For many Americans, no hamburger is complete without cheese. Whether a slice of no-fuss American or something fancier, the cheese melds the beef patty with the bun into umami-laden perfection. Until now, the cheeseburger was the stuff of daydreams for Jews observing kosher dietary laws that… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Michael McCaul wants Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to know he has his back when it comes to Israel’s demand that Iran leaves Syria for good. “If it’s not good enough for Israel, it’s not good enough for me,” said McCaul, the Texas Republican who… Read more »

(JTA) — When he signed up to be a counselor at a Jewish-run summer camp for refugee children, Isaac Eastlund expected to confront trauma. Instead, when he would come up to his campers, a couple months or years removed from fleeing Afghanistan or the Democratic Republic of the Congo,… Read more »

Last week, Facebook CEO  Mark Zuckerberg said his platform would not remove content denying the Holocaust, but that the content would be less likely to show up in someone’s news feed. The Lawfare Project filed takedown notices this week against Facebook posts denying the Holocaust and containing anti-Semitic material,… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — On Sunday, Aug. 12, Unite the Right, the agglomeration of far-right groups that organized the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia, rally last year, hopes to meet there again on its anniversary. Likely missing from the 2018 rally, if courts allow it to take place: armed individuals and groups, by… Read more »

(JTA) – Once a must-read for young fashonistas, Teen Vogue in 2016 expanded its coverage, shifting the magazine more aggressively into “covering politics, feminism, identity and activism” from an apparently liberal lens. Now, among articles on makeup, celebrities and clothing trends, Teen Vogue would like to give Israel a… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s new production of “Fiddler on the Roof” enacts a familiar story in an unfamiliar language. The actors sing about joy and hardship, and argue about the importance of tradition, in the language their characters would have spoken in the Old… Read more »

(JTA) — Despite a career of more than two decades kvetching incessantly about life’s absurd little annoyances, comedian and actor Orny Adams insists he’s an optimist who’s always been an early riser, eager to tackle anything that confronts him. “When I wake up,” he says, “I find myself to… Read more »

(JTA) — Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to give everyone in the world a voice. But what happens when some of those wishing a voice are Holocaust deniers? That question was posed to the Facebook founder in an interview Wednesday with Recode, a tech news site, about the social… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — As a Jew of color, Rabbi Georgette Kennebrae has had her fair share of experiences that have made her feel less than welcome in the Jewish community. People sometimes assume that she is a member of the synagogue janitorial staff rather than the rabbi. Sometimes when… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Growing up in Imperial Japan during World War II, Isaac Shapiro’s best friend was a member of the Hitler Youth. The friend wore the organization’s brown shirt uniform to their international school every day, but not because he wanted to — he was German and Japan… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The media, Congress, the international community — just about everybody is reeling after the joint news conference on Monday in Helsinki bringing together President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among other remarkable declarations, Trump seemed to agree with Putin by doubting the U.S. intelligence… Read more »