© 2012 Peter Billard Photographer, 160 Oak Street Unit 206, Glastonbury, CT 860-633-6300 pbillard@snet.net 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 »
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)
(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 »
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)
(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 »
President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner in the Oval Office of the White House, July 25, 2017.(Zach Gibson/Pool/Getty Images)
(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 »
Stephen Miller, the White House senior adviser for policy, photographed at the White House, Dec. 15, 2017. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
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 »
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)
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 »
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)
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 »
Rabbi Raziel Shevach, right, shown with his family, was killed in a shooting near Nablus in the northern West Bank. (Facebook)
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 »
Stephen Bannon at a White House news conference, Feb. 16, 2017. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
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 »
Two Delta Connection passenger jets at LaGuardia Airport in New York, October 2017. (Robert Alexander/Getty Images)
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 »
Jared Kushner at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C., July 31, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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 »
Congregants from Temple Hadar Israel in New Castle, Pa., gather at the local Tifereth Israel cemetery to bury ritual objects from their defunct synagogue, Dec. 31, 2017. (Alanna E. Cooper)
NEW CASTLE, Pa. (JTA) — It was a frigid 10 degrees on Sunday, the last day of 2017, but some 20 people gathered at Congregation Tifereth Israel’s cemetery in this city of 22,000 on the Ohio border. A blue tent and folding chairs had been set up for… Read more »
Jason Greenblatt, in gray shirt, visits the Nahal Oz military base near the Gaza border, Aug. 30, 2017. (Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump’s chief Israeli-Palestinian negotiator, has an office just around the corner from the White House. On his computer monitor is a Post-it note, inscribed with a quote from former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo: “At the end of the day, a peace agreement… Read more »
Sholom Rubashkin, seen in Postville, Iowa, in December 2004, served eight years of a 27-year prison term for bank fraud. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Why did President Donald Trump commute the sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, the former CEO of an Iowa kosher meat plant sentenced to 27 years in prison for bank fraud? The official line is that the bipartisan support for Rubashkin’s cause made cutting short his sentence a… Read more »
The historic Salt Lake Temple and the world headquarters of the Mormon church in Salt Lake City, Utah, Nov. 14, 2015. (George Frey/Getty Images)
(JTA) — A researcher says Mormons have posthumously baptized the late Lubavitcher rebbe, the grandparents of Carrie Fisher and Steven Spielberg, and hundreds of Holocaust victims, violating an agreement to halt the practice. Helen Radkey, a Salt Lake City-based independent researcher who has been looking into the Mormon practice… Read more »
From a wave of bomb threats to JCCs and a neo-Nazi in Charlottesville and to Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, 2017 was not a quiet year for Jews. (JTA collage)
(JTA) — The past year was not a quiet one, to say the least. From the tumultuous first year of Donald Trump’s presidency to a wave of bomb threats against Jewish community centers to the flood of high-profile sexual harassment allegations, Jews — like so many others —… Read more »
Pictured, Brenda Landau, right, with seventh graders at the Or Chadash annual meeting on May 9, 2016. Landau and her son Matt Landau are the Noah Cohen Memorial Philanthropy Program advisors.
SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — Lyla Maymon and Jane Shvartzman went to interview officials last year at the Larkin Street Youth, a San Francisco organization fighting homelessness among young people, to see if their programs were worthy of a philanthropic grant. Maymon and Shvartzman asked all the right questions, like… Read more »
An illustrative photo of students at a Jewish day school. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Lawmakers finalizing the proposed tax overhaul reportedly have removed a provision that had sent shivers through the graduate student and Jewish day school communities. The House version of the reform bill, which was drafted by the Republican leadership, had removed the qualified tuition credit. The credit… Read more »
Children participate in a Yom Kippur event at the Palo Alto JCC, October 2017. (Ilyanne Photographic Art)
PALO ALTO, Calif. (JTA) — With a foot in the tech world and another in Jewish culture, the JCC in Palo Alto has transformed itself into a hub for local Israeli expatriates. Located on a sprawling 8.5-acre campus, the place known formally as the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center… Read more »
Activists in front of the White House protest President Donald Trump's decision to decertify the Iran deal, Oct. 12, 2017. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Two months ago, President Donald Trump triggered a deadline about to come due on the Iran nuclear deal by decertifying Iran’s compliance. That meant Congress had 60 days to reimpose sanctions. Sixty days later — on Dec. 12 — Congress is not about to reimpose… Read more »
