Tagged politics

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (Jewish Louisville Community via JTA) — After winning a special election in the state’s 26th district last week, Karen Berg will become the only Jewish member of the Kentucky state legislature. “I’m very excited; I’m humbled; I’m ready to get to work,” said Berg, who will serve… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — One thing we know about elections is that Jewish voters can make a difference. Take Florida: The Sunshine State’s Jewish voters helped deliver its critical electoral votes to Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Problematic ballots in heavily Jewish Broward County may have clinched George W. Bush’s… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Left-wing candidates appeared to be surging in Democratic congressional primaries in New York, although results were preliminary into Wednesday as mail-in votes necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic were still being counted. Jamaal Bowman, who challenged longtime incumbent Eliot Engel in the 16th District, covering parts of… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — In 2014, Lacey Schwartz Delgado made headlines around the world for a documentary in which she explored a shocking family secret. “Little White Lie” tells Schwartz Delgado’s real-life story of being raised in a white Jewish family in the upstate New York town of Woodstock. Though… Read more »

LAS VEGAS (JTA) — This summer, America’s Jewish youth rebelled. Or at least a very small minority of them did. But through orchestrated stunts and aggressive marketing, they garnered the headlines they sought. These youth are demanding that Israel end its “occupation,” presumably of the West Bank. They are… Read more »

(JTA) — Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels didn’t mince words when he criticized Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump and a former congregant of his Southern California synagogue, in his Rosh Hashanah sermon. “Honestly, Mr. Miller, you’ve set back the Jewish contribution to making the world spiritually whole… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, appearing at a Jewish day school in Brooklyn, spoke about her Jewish background and how her family jumped from synagogue to synagogue. “I had a very strange Jewish upbringing actually,” Kagan, 58, told journalist Dahlia Lithwick, who moderated the Wednesday… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s hard to follow the news these last weeks without running into a reference to the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which provides for the removal from office of a president unfit to serve. Questions about Donald Trump’s capacity to govern arise in “Fear,” Bob… Read more »

One way to keep things even and even-tempered in your sukkah this holiday and election season. (Edmon J. Rodman)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — In an election year, a sukkah divided against itself cannot stand. Especially in the swing states, where each party is basically claiming that if the other wins we’ll all be living in sukkahs, political dinner conversation this Sukkot could really topple an already shaky house.… Read more »

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, pictured here addressing a Republican Jewish Coalition event in June 2011, has become a star in Republican circles after exposing Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner's lewd tweets. (RJC)

(Los Angeles) The TV cameras at the Beverly Hilton Hotel’s ballroom were there to cover a foreign policy speech by Newt Gingrich, but during the cocktail hour, all eyes at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Summer Bash were on Andrew Breitbart. While Gingrich was mingling privately at the June 12… Read more »

Nancy Kaufman with Dean Jep Strait, left, Father Demetrios Tonias, Pastor Wesley Roberts and Bishop Gideon Thompson on a summer study tour in Israel in 2009. (Photo courtesy of Boston JCRC)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — With the prospect for the first American universal health care plan apparently dimming in Massachusetts because the three outsize personalities vital to its passage — the state’s governor, its House speaker and its Senate president — could not agree on the details, Nancy Kaufman came to… Read more »