National

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Add sweeping school reforms – and with them, funding for private schools that Orthodox groups embrace and secular Jewish groups fear — to the campaign promises that Donald Trump plans to fulfill. Last week, just before Thanksgiving, the president-elect named Betsy DeVos, a billionaire education reform activist… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry signaled in a speech that the Obama administration was still considering action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its final days, although it might fall short of a direct intervention on the issue. There’s no way to “force-feed” peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Kerry said… Read more »

The U.S. Postal Service has released a new Hanukkah Forever stamp. The first-day-of-issue stamp dedication ceremony took place Nov. 1 at Temple Beth El of Boca Raton in Florida. The holiday begins this year at sundown on Dec. 24. “The Hanukkah stamp we’re dedicating today honors a religious observance… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – The most shocking thing about talk of Keith Ellison’s Israel record as he rises within the Democratic Party is how few think it’s shocking. Rep. Ellison, D-Minn., is a leading contender for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, despite a record of tough criticism of Israel… Read more »

  WASHINGTON (JTA) — In recent months, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have each emphasized what in recent years hardly needed emphasizing: mainstream Jewish support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The reiterations of support signify a concern… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Stephen Bannon, in his first interviews since Donald Trump named him a top White House aide, denied being anti-Semitic or a white nationalist. At the same time, he continued to advance a theory of “globalist” conspiracy that echoes centuries-old anti-Semitic libels, but without any mention of Jews.… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — After Brett Parker’s great-grandfather fled the pogroms in Europe and came to the United States, he opened a drug store where he sold comic books. Each week he would give his grandson, Parker’s father, five comic books to take home. Growing up during the early… Read more »

(JTA) — Speakers at an event of the white supremacist think tank the National Policy Institute quoted Nazi propaganda and said the media protects Jewish interests. The day-long event of speeches and panel discussions attended by about 200 people was held Saturday in Washington, D.C. The New York Times… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Controversial pasts with incendiary statements and a fierce loyalty to the president-elect. Judging from the announcements Donald Trump is expected to make Friday, his White House and Cabinet is likelier to look a lot more like Stephen Bannon than Reince Priebus. Those are, respectively, Trump’s top… Read more »

  (JTA) — For years, whenever Jews and Muslims engaged in dialogue and activism, it usually concerned one issue: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency, that appears to be changing. Regardless of what’s happening across the ocean, Jews and Muslims in the United States are… Read more »

  WASHINGTON (JTA) – Offer an open hand or a closed fist — or maybe both. Name names. Don’t name names, hint. Quietly adjust wording. Welcome to the second week of the World of Trump, Jewish organizational edition. Week 1 was fraught enough, with Jewish statements marking Donald Trump’s… Read more »

(JTA) — Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent, has joined the Senate Democratic leadership. Sanders was named chair of outreach for the party on Wednesday, according to reports on the closed-door Senate Democratic caucus meeting. As an Independent, Sanders was an outsider to the Democratic Party until he ran… Read more »

(JTA) — President-elect Donald Trump has a complicated history with Jews. On the one hand, his daughter Ivanka converted to Orthodox Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner, and he’s spoken fondly about having Jewish grandchildren. On the other, some of Trump’s supporters have links to the anti-Semitic far right movement known as… Read more »

  (JTA) — On Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump appointed Stephen Bannon to be his chief strategist. Before joining Trump’s campaign, Bannon was the chairman of Breitbart News, a site steeped in conspiracy theories that has featured the white supremacist, anti-Semitic ideologies of the so-called alt-right. Bannon has also been accused of… Read more »

  (JTA) — At the start of his campaign, he was dismissed as a fringe protest candidate, an old man with messy hair whose ideas were too extreme to win a national election. But now that Democratic mainstay Hillary Clinton has lost the election to Donald Trump, it’s worth… Read more »

(JTA) — Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL whose seven military awards include the Bronze Star, has become the first Jewish governor of Missouri. Greitens, 42, a Republican, also is a former Rhodes scholar and the founder of The Mission Continues, a nonprofit that helps veterans integrate themselves back… Read more »

(JTA) — At 6:30 Wednesday morning, Oklahoma City Rabbi Abby Jacobson received a text from one of her teenage congregants expressing sadness at the presidential election results — and fear. “She said, ‘I’m sorry for texting you, rabbi, but I can’t say any of this at school,’” related Jacobson,… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In dueling election recaps on Wednesday, J Street and the Republican Jewish Coalition claimed they beat the other when it came to supporting like-minded candidates. The arena was Congress and the weapon of choice was Iran: RJC campaigned against candidates associated with the nuclear deal, J Street… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Donald Trump will be the next U.S. president, having swept to victory in at least 29 states with 288 electoral votes and jolted a Jewish community made increasingly anxious as his rough-edged nativist rhetoric emboldened the far right and amplified a strain of anti-Semitic invective not heard… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Reform movement and other liberal Jewish groups are urging Israel’s U.S. ambassador, Ron Dermer, not to accept an award from an organization deemed by the Anti-Defamation League to promulgate anti-Muslim extremism. The ADL itself stopped short of asking Dermer not to accept the award next… Read more »