National

Damage to New York City infrastructure, like this one inside a New York subway station, was extensively documented online as Hurricane Sandy washed ashore. (@HeyVeronica via Twitter)

NEW YORK (JTA) – At 10 p.m. on Monday, as the full brunt of Hurricane Sandy was bearing down on the northeastern United States, filmmaker Sandi Dubowski posted an urgent online message. DuBowski’s elderly parents had declined to leave their home in Manhattan Beach, a neighborhood of southern Brooklyn… Read more »

President Barack Obama, left, and challenger Mitt Romney differ on several issues of importance to the Jewish community. (Graphics by Uri Fintzy)

NEW YORK (JTA) -- JTA reviews the positions of presidential candidates Barack Obama, the Democratic incumbent, and Republican challenger Mitt Romney on some issues of importance to the Jewish community.… Read more »

Mitt Romney speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition presidential candidates' forum, Dec. 7, 2011. (Republican Jewish Coalition)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Mitt Romney’s record as a moderate Republican governor would seem to have made him ideally suited to peel off Jewish votes from President Obama. The problem is that he spent much of the past half decade running from that past. Now, however, as the campaign draws… Read more »

President Obama addressing the biennial conference of the Union for Reform Judaism, Dec. 16, 2011. (URJ)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The moment in the final presidential debate when President Obama described his visit to Israel’s national Holocaust museum and to the rocket-battered town of Sderot seemed to be aimed right for the kishkes. The “kishkes question” — the persistent query about how Obama really feels about… Read more »

Mitt Romney, left, and President Obama, shown onscreen during their debate on Oct. 22, 2012, were generally in agreement on the Middle East at the Florida one-on-one on foreign policy. (Rosa Trieu/Neon Tommy via Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel, a heated issue throughout the campaign, finally took center stage at the final presidential debate. It was mentioned a total of 31 times by President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney at Monday night’s foreign policy debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. Actual… Read more »

George McGovern signing his book "Abraham Lincoln" at the Richard M. Nixon Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Calif., August 2009. (Scott Clarkson via CC)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — George McGovern is widely remembered for advocating immediate American withdrawal from Vietnam and sharp reductions in defense spending. Yet despite his reputation as a pacifist, the former U.S. senator and 1972 presidential candidate, who died Sunday at 90, did believe there were times when America should… Read more »

Hannah Rosenthal, center, the anti-Semitism monitor for the United States, meeting with English language micro-scholarship students in Azerbaijan, March 2011. (U.S. Embassy Baku)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Anti-Semitism overseas is being noted with increasing frequency by U.S. State Department human rights reports, and Hannah Rosenthal says that’s a good thing. Rosenthal, the State Department’s second anti-Semitism monitor, says increased reporting reflects burgeoning awareness of the problem among U.S. diplomats. “The not-so-sexy part of… Read more »

Arlen Specter, shown speaking at the AFL-CIO convention in September 2009, represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate for 30 years. (Steve Dietz/Sharp Image)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — During his 30 years in the clubby confines of the U.S. Senate, Arlen Specter never lost his acerbic prosecutorial zeal, friends and associates say. The insistent questions, the commitment to independence that made the longtime Pennsylvania senator a critical player in recent U.S. history, ultimately did… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When 15 prominent American Protestant leaders sent a letter to Congress last week calling for an investigation and possible suspension of U.S. aid to Israel, at least one outcome was certain: The Jews wouldn’t like it. Already, one major American Jewish group has canceled its participation… Read more »

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at a joint news conference with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov in Jerusalem, Sept. 11, 2012. (Itay Beit-On/GPO)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In the U.S.-Israel relationship, “daylight” is back, but this time it’s Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is being called on to draw down the shades. Netanyahu’s recent sharp rebuke of the Obama administration’s Iran policies has drawn equally pointed pushback from Jewish Democrats. The back… Read more »

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaking at a rally in Nashua, N.H., Sept. 7, 2012. (Marc Nozell via Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Mitt Romney’s pessimistic take on Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects drew some media attention but not much noise from centrist Jewish groups. Only groups on the right and the left ends of the communal spectrum issued statements in response to the revelations this week of Romney’s remarks, respectively… Read more »

Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens was one of four U.S. diplomats killed in a rocket attack in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. (U.S. Department of State)

NEW YORK (JTA) — There was no Israeli-American real estate developer named Sam Bacile, and the 100 Jews he claimed had financed his anti-Islam film were fictitious as well. Both fabrications were offered to the media apparently to hide the true identity of the Egyptian Christian from Southern California… Read more »

  American Physicians and Friends for Medicine in Israel will hold an Emergency and Disaster Preparedness Course, Nov. 3-8, in Israel. In conjunction with the Ministry of Health and the medical corps of the Israel Defense Forces, the course offers emergency and peacetime preparedness techniques. Local physician Ken Brandis,… Read more »

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (JTA) — Republicans and Democrats may not have much common ground this election year, yet their national conventions shared one feature: Both gatherings were blessed from the podium by prominent American rabbis. The Democrats had Rabbi David Wolpe, a best-selling author and leader of a prominent (capital-c)… Read more »

President Obama speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 6, 2012. (Donna Bise via flickr.com/photos/demconvention)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (JTA) — It was the nuts-and-bolts convention that nearly broke down over the most ethereal of issues: Jerusalem and God. But by its third and final night, the Democratic National Convention had gotten back on message: jobs, jobs, staying on course with getting the economy back on… Read more »

Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles and chairman of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., introducing the platform amendment that affirms Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Sept. 5, 2012. (Camden Lee via flickr.com/photos/demconvention)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (JTA) — At President Obama’s behest, and to boos from some delegates, Democrats on Wednesday night inserted a few lines into their party platform affirming Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Two of the lines had appeared in the 2008 party platform but had been dropped for some reason… Read more »

David Harris, the president of the National Jewish Democratic Council, speaking to a British journalist outside the NJDC bus in Charlotte, N.C., the site of the Democratic National Convention, about reported tensions between President Obama and Jewish voters, Sept. 3, 2012. (Ron Kampeas)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (JTA) — Jewish swing voters could make or break President Obama’s bid for reelection. At least that’s the case that Democratic Party leaders made in a training session that packed one of the larger halls at the convention center here on Monday, the day before the formal… Read more »

Ann and Mitt Romney after his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Aug. 30, 2012. (Romney campaign)

TAMPA Fla. (JTA) — Republicans spent three evenings at their convention hammering home their message: After four years of leadership failures, Mitt Romney will restore America to a position of strength, confidence and unity — at home and abroad. In his Thursday night speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination,… Read more »

Mitt Romney speaking at the NASCAR Technical Institute in Mooresville, N.C., Aug. 11, 2012. (Mitt Romney official website)

TAMPA, Fla. (JTA) — Whole barbecued pigs, cheerleaders and elegies to skinny-dipping farmers’ daughters. That was the organized noise Sunday night at the opening bash of the Republican National Convention at Tropicana Field, the home of Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays in St. Petersburg. For those seeking Jewish… Read more »

Members of ZAKA rescuing a Torah from Congregation Beth Israel after Hurricane Katrina hit, August 2005. (Courtesy ZAKA)

(JTA) — Seven years ago an iconic picture for many Jews of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was of men waist deep in a flooded synagogue carrying Torahs to safety. On Sunday, in a celebration of physical and spiritual unity, the Torahs of that congregation were carried into… Read more »