A Hanukkah celebration at the Kitchen in San Francisco on Dec. 9, 2015. (Q Lam)
NEW YORK (JTA) – In the summer of 2011, Lizzi Heydemann returned to her native Chicago to establish a Jewish community loosely modeled on Ikar, the Los Angeles congregation where she had spent two years as a rabbinic intern. She set about harvesting email addresses and putting out the… Read more »
Jonathan Greenblatt, left, with the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, October 2015. (Courtesy of the Anti-Defamation League)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Framed by a slide of two young guys in jeans and tees playing ping-pong on the Facebook campus, Jonathan Greenblatt described an event hosted by the social media behemoth in Palo Alto, California, the week before. “Some of the stuff we’ve done has been really exciting, like… Read more »
(JTA) — The Iowa caucuses are over – and the first real test of the presidential candidates’ viability gave us more questions than answers. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, won the Republican caucus on Monday night, relegating Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire, to second place. Both Trump and Cruz ran… Read more »
David Adelman, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, introducing Hillary Clinton before a speech at federation headquarters, Jan. 25, 2016. (Josh Tapper)
DES MOINES, Iowa (JTA) – Ten minutes into her speech at the Jewish Federation of Des Moines on Monday, Hillary Rodham Clinton had a coughing fit. She popped a lozenge, but that didn’t help. After a few long seconds and still gasping for air, Clinton turned to federation president… Read more »
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton participating in a town hall forum at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 25, 2016. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Hillary Rodham Clinton made her ability to talk Israel’s leadership down from military action a centerpiece of her foreign policy credentials. Clinton, appearing Monday evening at a town hall-style event at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, was asked to outline her foreign policy philosophy. Two of… Read more »
Restaurants at Disney World in Orlando serve kosher meals by special request, but 48-hour advance notice is required. (Uriel Heilman)
ORLANDO, Fla. (JTA) – As any religiously observant Jew knows, going on vacation can take a lot of work. Aside from the customary preparations, there are the added complications of organizing kosher food and Shabbat logistics. Many kosher tourists spend days before trips precooking meals to freeze and bring… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) – On Monday, Iowans will gather to launch the 2016 presidential election with an arcane ritual — the caucus. In living rooms and meeting halls throughout the state, caucus-goers will group themselves into clusters according to which presidential candidate… Read more »
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders deliverS a speech on financial reform in New York, Jan. 5, 2016. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Talk of a Bernie Sanders presidency has suddenly become a lot more serious. Recent polling shows the independent Vermont senator and Democratic presidential hopeful dramatically improving his prospects in the first two primary states against front-runner Hillary Clinton. Two polls out last week — by the Des… Read more »
Rabbi Avidan Milevsky, gesturing, leads a Sunday morning Talmud class after services at Kesher Israel in Washington, D.C., Dec. 20, 2015. (Uriel Heilman)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Though it’s been more than a year since Rabbi Barry Freundel was hauled away in handcuffs for installing secret cameras at his synagogue’s mikvah, his crime still casts a shadow over his longtime Orthodox congregation, Kesher Israel. Three civil lawsuits are pending against Kesher by women… Read more »
Alan Gross opens up about surviving Cuban prison, selfies
Alan Gross displaying his Cuban cigars at his apartment in Washington, D.C., Dec. 23, 2015. (Suzanne Pollak/Washington Jewish Week)
(Washington Jewish Week via JTA) – Since being imprisoned in Cuba six years ago, Alan Gross says his life has been “surreal.” He feels disassociated from the causes of his five-year incarceration and from the resulting fame. He was locked up largely because of U.S.-Cuba relations, he says, and… Read more »
Ellen Gerecht, executive director of the National Center to Encourage Judaism, at her office in Silver Spring, Maryland, Dec. 29, 2015. (Suzanne Pollak/Washington Jewish Week)
(Washington Jewish Week via JTA) — Maybe it’s the centuries of living under Christian and Muslim rule. Maybe it’s the history of forced conversion. Maybe it’s that there’s no religion requirement for the Jewish afterlife. Whatever the reasons, Jews have traditionally been uncomfortable proselytizing. But a Maryland foundation is flouting… Read more »
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington, D.C., Dec. 3, 2015. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Ted Cruz wants to make sure you understand: “Republican” and “neoconservative” are no longer synonymous. The Texas senator, inching up to second place behind front-runner Donald Trump in the polls just weeks before the Iowa caucuses, has launched a broadside against the “crazy” movement that not… Read more »
Miriam and Sheldon Adelson in Jerusalem to hear 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney deliver foreign policy remarks, July 29, 2012. (Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Miriam Adelson and her husband, Sheldon, reportedly are at odds over which Republican presidential candidate deserves backing. But this isn’t a typical marital spat — it’s about which candidate most deserves to be showered with their money. Miriam Adelson, an Israeli-born physician, favors Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, while casino… Read more »
Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Dec. 14, 2015. (Patrick
T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) – Donald Trump’s call last week to bar all Muslims from entering the United States “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on” has set off a deluge of criticism in America and around the world, from U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan to Israeli… Read more »
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, left, met U.S. Jewish religious
leaders, including Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick
Jacobs, in New York, Dec. 11, 2015. (Courtesy of the Union for Reform
Judaism)
NEW YORK (JTA) – It was all hugs and smiles when Israeli President Reuven Rivlin met Friday with leaders of America’s three main Jewish denominations at an event hosted by UJA-Federation of New York. But when it came time to speak, the Reform and Conservative leaders made clear they… Read more »
Ayman Odeh, carrying one of his three children, casting his vote in
Nazareth on Israel's Election Day, March 17, 2015. (Basal
Awidat/Flash90)
(JTA) — Arab-Israeli lawmaker and political leader Ayman Odeh refused to meet with the umbrella foreign policy body for American Jews because it shares office space with the Jewish Agency, an abrupt and dissonant end to a trip that was aimed at promoting greater Arab-Jewish cooperation. “I came here… Read more »
Nicholas Thalasinos renewing his marital vows with his wife at a
Jewish-style ceremony, 2013. (Facebook)
(JTA) – While America puzzles over the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, many American Jews are puzzling over an additional element: the religious identity of victim Nicholas Thalasinos. Pictured on his Facebook page wearing a scarf-style tallit prayer shawl, Thalasinos, who was killed along with 13 others in… Read more »
Law enforcement officials investigating the Ford SUV at the scene
where suspects of the shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San
Bernardino, Calif., were killed in a shootout with police, Dec. 3,
2015. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
(JTA) – Since last week’s mass shooting in the California city of San Bernardino, U.S. authorities have been piecing together what might have led Syed Farook and his wife, Tafsheen Malik, to gun down 14 of Farook’s colleagues at a holiday party for county health department employees. The attack raises… Read more »
Donald Trump speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition Presidential
Candidates Forum in Washington, D.C., Dec. 3, 2015. (Alex Wong/Getty
Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In carefully tailored stump speeches that ranged in tone from apocalyptic to chummy, all but one of the Republican presidential candidates showed up in an attempt to woo Jewish voters. Many of the speeches at the Republican Jewish Coalition Presidential Candidates Forum, held Dec. 3 at… Read more »
Secretary of State John Kerry addressing the Saban Forum in
Washington, D.C., Dec. 5, 2015. (Courtesy of Brookings Institution)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking at an annual U.S.-Israel confab, said Israel’s government must consider the consequences of evolving toward a single state incorporating the Palestinian areas. “How does Israel possibly maintain its character as a Jewish democratic state?” Kerry said Saturday at the Saban Forum in Washington,… Read more »
