National

What is AIPAC’s role in the age of Trump?

Donald Trump waving after addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., March 21, 2016. Trump was elected president nearly eight months later. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
February 28, 2018 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When candidate Donald Trump spoke at AIPAC’s Policy Conference in 2016 and said Barack Obama may be the worst thing that ever happened to Israel, many cheered, many choked and the organization apologized. The fallout from that event will haunt the proceedings when 18,000 activists, including… Read more »

Meet the Jewish teenager from Maryland running to be governor of Kansas
February 27, 2018 / Ben Sales, JTA
Ilan Cohen says it was a "very easy process" to get on the ballot in Kansas even though he is not legally allowed to vote. (Courtesy of Cohen)

(JTA) — Ilan Cohen loves Kansas. He knows a couple of people in Kansas. He’s currently, officially, running to be governor of Kansas. And one day he hopes to visit Kansas. And turn 18. And be able to vote. And graduate from high school. Right now, Cohen is a… Read more »

For women in Jewish fundraising, harassment is an occupational hazard

The Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York organized a town hall on sexual harassment in the Jewish nonprofit community, Jan. 25 , 2018. (Deborah Nussbaum Cohen)
February 26, 2018 / Debra Nussbaum Cohen, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — She was young, Jewish and the founder of a nonprofit organization that aids deprived children in Southeast Asia. He was a potential funder more than twice her age, promising donations and introductions to influential people. “He dangled a lot of carrots,” she said in retrospect.… Read more »

Parkland students begin to heal at Jewish conference in New York

In center, with the red beard, Rabbi Shaya Denburg, co-director of CTeen in Coral Springs, Fla., with Rabbi Moshe Klein on his right; Chayale Denburg, co-director of CTeen in Coral Springs, Fla., who is standing and second from right; and some survivors of the Parkland, Fla. school shooting. The survivors were in New York this weekend for Chabad's CTeen conference. (Itzik Roytman/Cteen)
February 26, 2018 / Ben Sales, JTA

(JTA) — Seven survivors of the Parkland school shooting were among thousands of Jewish high school students who attended the annual conference of the Chabad movement’s youth group. Responding to the Feb. 14 shooting became an impromptu theme of the conference, which was hosted in New York City by… Read more »

Florida congressman’s kids are using hamantaschen to help end gun violence

From left to right: Gabby, Cole and Serena Deutch drew inspiration from the Purim story for their fundraising initiative. (Courtesy of Gabby Deutch) --
February 26, 2018 / Josefin Dolsten, JTA

  (JTA) — The college-aged kids of a Jewish congressman from Florida are raising money to end gun violence by selling hamantaschen. Gabby, Serena and Cole Deutch launched the Bake Action Against Gun Violence initiative on Sunday. Their father is Rep. Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat who represents the district where… Read more »

Why these supporters of a new US Embassy in Jerusalem think Sheldon Adelson shouldn’t pay for it

The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, June 14, 2016. (Flash90)
February 26, 2018 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sheldon Adelson’s offer to help pay for the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem is getting a thumb’s down from a range of observers who support the embassy’s relocation. The Associated Press had the exclusive on Friday morning, and JTA confirmed it with sources who have been… Read more »

BBYO convention theme sounds prescient note

Tucson delegates at the BBYO International Convention in Orlando, Florida, held Feb. 14-19. Front row: Joshua Kaufmann, Aliya Markowitz, Gabriel Friedman, Sam Goldfinger; back row: Joshua Cohen, Avin Kreisler, Richard Fisher, Aaron Green, Maxwell Silverman, Jaden Boling
February 22, 2018 / Pamela Ruben JNS

Mike Signer, who was mayor of Charlottesville, Va., during the rally last August that brought white supremacists to the forefront of international attention, recalled that he was about 8 or 9 when he heard his first anti-Semitic slur. “Growing up in Northern Virginia, the last thing I wanted to… Read more »

OBITUARY Billy Graham, who championed Israel in public and derided Jews in private, dies at 99

SOUTHAMPTON, UNITED KINGDOM: Billy Graham, the American evangelist, the Bible beneath his hand, pounds his knee as he is interviewed aboard the liner "United States" 26 February 1954 upon his arrival from New York to Southampton. Graham, (son of a dairy farmer, born in 1918 in Charlotte, NC), attended Florida Bible Institute and was ordained a Southern Baptist minister in 1939 and quickly gained a reputation as a preacher. During the 1950s he conducted a series of highly organized revivalist campaigns in the USA and UK, and later in South America, the USSR and Western Europe. (Photo credit should read AFP/Getty Images)
February 22, 2018 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

  WASHINGTON (JTA) — Billy Graham, the giant of American evangelism who was exalted by Jews for his championing of Israel at its hour of need and then condemned when a nasty anti-Semitic streak was revealed, has died. Graham, 99, died at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, media… Read more »

Only 6 percent of Washington DC’s Jewish community identify as Republican

The U.S. Capitol building shown on Feb. 9, 2018. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images)
February 18, 2018 / Ben Sales, JTA

(JTA) — Jews in and around the nation’s capital do plenty of Jewish things. Many of them just don’t do those things as members of Jewish institutions. That’s one of the main takeaways from a wide-ranging survey of Washington, D.C.-area Jews published this week by the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.… Read more »

This Jewish lawyer blogs about Hanukkah. He also defends America’s most infamous Nazi.
February 15, 2018 / Ron Kampeas, JTA
© 2012 Peter Billard Photographer, 160 Oak Street Unit 206, Glastonbury, CT 860-633-6300 [email protected]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jay Marshall Wolman, like a thousand other lawyers on Twitter, is wry, maybe a little coarse and, well, Jewish, peppering his tweets with Hebrew blessings and other Jewish references. He gets deadly serious, though, if you ask him why he is the lead attorney representing Andrew… Read more »

The Jewish sheriff leading the response to the Florida school shooting quotes the Talmud

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel speaking at a news conference near Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Feb. 15, 2018. Seventeen people were killed there a day earlier by a lone gunman. (Amy Beth Bennett/Sun Sentinel/TNS via Getty Images)
February 15, 2018 / Ben Sales, JTA

(JTA) — As he leads the police response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is likely enduring some of the toughest days of his career. And he’s probably looking to his Judaism to guide him through it. Israel is the county’s first Jewish… Read more »

Florida school shooting’s Jewish victims remembered for their kindness

Kristi Gilroy hugs a young woman at a police checkpoint near the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Feb. 15, 2018. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
February 15, 2018 / Ben Sales and Josefin Dolsten, JTA

(JTA) — They volunteered. They played soccer. They went to camp. They were sweet, mature and easygoing. They were just beginning their lives, or helping others on their way. And one may have died so that others could live. Jewish students and staff were among the 17 people who… Read more »

Donald Trump and Team Kushner sure sound like they want to make a Mideast deal

President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner in the Oval Office of the White House, July 25, 2017.(Zach Gibson/Pool/Getty Images)
January 30, 2018 / Ami Eden, JTA

(JTA) — Donald Trump is just the man to get an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal done. Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister was gushing last week about Trump’s negotiating team, which is led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “The thing the people don’t realize is that these people… Read more »

A Jewish journalist is confronting Trump’s immigration allies with their own immigrant histories

Stephen Miller, the White House senior adviser for policy, photographed at the White House, Dec. 15, 2017. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
January 26, 2018 / Ben Sales, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — During a combative news conference in early August, White House adviser Stephen Miller told reporters that the United States should prioritize immigrants who speak English. “Does the applicant speak English?” Miller asked, describing a bill to reduce the overall number of immigrants and reform immigration… Read more »

Mike Pence’s faith drives his support for Israel. Does it drive Mideast policy?

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - JANUARY 22: US vice President Mike Pence (L) is seen with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an official welcome ceremony at the Prime Minister's Office on January 22, 2018 in Jerusalem, Israel. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence landed in Israel Sunday evening after visiting Egypt and Jordan. The Palestinian Authority is boycotting Pence's visit to the region, due to Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and announcement to move the embassy. (Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)
January 25, 2018 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

When Mike Pence moved to Washington earlier this year, he and his wife took with them a framed phrase they had for years hung over their fireplace in their Indiana home, and then over the fireplace in the governor’s mansion in that state. Now it hangs over the mantle… Read more »

Americans more likely than Europeans to stand up against anti-Semitism, experts say

From left to right: Ira Forman, Michael Whine, Heidi Beirich and Rabbi David Saperstein speaking on a panel in Washington, D.C., on the rise of the far right and anti-Semitism, Jan. 22 2018. (Ron Kampeas)
January 24, 2018 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s better here: That was the message of a panel of experts considering the rise of the extreme right and of anti-Semitism in the United States and Europe. That was the good news at the forum Monday sponsored by Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization. No… Read more »

Lack of peace with Israel is Palestinian’s fault, U.S. ambassador says after terror attack

Rabbi Raziel Shevach, right, shown with his family, was killed in a shooting near Nablus in the northern West Bank. (Facebook)
January 10, 2018 /

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The U.S. ambassador to Israel blamed the Palestinians for the lack of peace with Israel in the aftermath of a shooting in the West Bank that killed an Israeli man. David Friedman tweeted Wednesday morning, as the Israeli military expanded its search for the killer or killers, including… Read more »

Steve Bannon, facing heat for ‘Fire and Fury’ quotes, leaves Breitbart News

Stephen Bannon at a White House news conference, Feb. 16, 2017. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
January 10, 2018 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Steve Bannon, the former top strategic adviser to President Donald Trump, is leaving his powerful perch at Breitbart News. Breitbart News in a statement Tuesday said Bannon is a “valued part of our legacy,” but various media, including The New York Times, said he was ousted… Read more »

Delta employees detail a pattern of anti-Semitic abuse at airline

Two Delta Connection passenger jets at LaGuardia Airport in New York, October 2017. (Robert Alexander/Getty Images)
January 10, 2018 / Ben Sales, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — It wasn’t long after Nahum Amir began working for Delta Airlines as a mechanic that he says his manager started calling him “the Jewish guy.” Then Amir says the manager accused him and other Jews of “killing kids in Gaza.” During the same period, Yaron… Read more »

OP-ED The underwhelming fact that Jared Kushner has ties with Israeli businesses

Jared Kushner at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C., July 31, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
January 8, 2018 / Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — On Season 3 of “The West Wing,” a bomb goes off outside a cafe on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem, killing two American students. “What were they doing there?” asks C.J., the White House press secretary. C.J.’s question always struck me as the prime example of… Read more »