Tagged President Obama

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Pieties? Out. Passports? In. Paranoia? On its way. Jewish Americans have never been ones to sit out an election, whether it comes to voting, political fundraising or dinner table punditry. But even for a community grown used to the political fray, the 2016 campaign was different.… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — A pox on both your houses, but when you want a cure, we’re still here. That’s the message the Obama administration is sending Israel and the Palestinians amid the deepening crisis in peace efforts. “What we haven’t seen is, frankly, the kind of political will to… Read more »

President Obama placing a stone on the headstone of Yitzhak and Leah Rabin during a visit to Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, March 22, 2013. (Mark Neyman/GPO/JTA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — For a trip that U.S. officials had cautioned was not about getting “deliverables,” President Obama’s apparent success during his Middle East trip at getting Israel and Turkey to reconcile has raised some hopes for a breakthrough on another front: Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The question now is whether… Read more »

President Obama greeted by children waving Israeli and American flags at a welcoming ceremony at Shimon Peres' residence in Jerusalem, March 20, 2013. (Uri Lenz/FLASH90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) – President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s safe to say, haven’t always been the best of friends. The leaders of two closely allied countries, they’ve have had a relationship described more often as tense than anything else. But on the first day of Obama’s… Read more »

Some interesting color in this one on President  Obama’s time childhood in Indonesia, plus a couple jokes between leaders. Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu met just outside the PM’s residence. When they entered the home, they went in front of flags for a photo-op. Obama invited Sara Netanyahu… Read more »

President Barack Obama, left, talking with Chief of Staff Jack Lew, center, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as they walk on the colonnade of the White House, shortly before the president announced Lew as hs nominee to replace Geithner as treasury secretary, Jan. 10, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Obama believes prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace are “bleak,” but he still will urge both sides to avoid unilateral actions that might further damage a process he hopes will be back on track within a year. That was the message Obama delivered Thursday in a meeting… Read more »

Uri Dromi

The announcement that President Obama will visit Israel in the spring came as a total surprise. Not that a visit of the leader of the greatest nation on earth (still) and the closest ally of Israel should be unwelcomed, but the circumstances seem a bit odd. First of all,… Read more »

President Obama talks on the phone with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas aboard Air Force One, July 9, 2010. (Pete Souza/White House).

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Is history about to repeat itself? President Obama’s first three years in office saw some serious tussling with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the peace process and settlements. Now, with Obama beginning his second term and Netanyahu looking pretty certain to win next month’s Israeli… Read more »

President Obama attends the Sandy Hook interfaith vigil at Newtown High School in Newtown, Conn., Dec. 16, 2012. ((Pete Souza/White House)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In the wake of the shooting rampage in Newtown, Conn., Jewish groups are looking to build alliances and back legislation to strengthen gun control laws. Rabbi David Saperstein, the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said that his group is assembling a coalition… Read more »

This is the speech President Barack Obama should have given in the wake of the mass shooting on Friday morning at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. The shooter killed 28 people, 20 of them children between the ages of 5 and 10. This speech begins the same way… 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 »

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 »

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 »

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), left, Democratic National Committee chair and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. (Photos by Gage Skidmore, graphic design by Uri Fintzy)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Get set for a political double feature with much of the same plot, but with different outcomes for the issues that tend to preoccupy Jewish voters. The same key words and themes will bounce around Jewish events at next week’s Republican convention in Tampa, Fla,. and… Read more »

President Obama, flanked by Nathan Diament, left, and Dr. Simcha Katz of the Orthodox Union, displays the framed reproduction of President George Washington’s letter to the Jewish community of Newport, R.I., that he was given at the conclusion of his Oval Office meeting with Orthodox Jewish leaders.(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Nathan Diament learned two things 22 years ago while watching Barack Obama play pickup basketball at the Harvard Law School gym. “He was a generous passer,” he said of the school’s Law Review editor and the future U.S. president. “He was competitive, but at an appropriate… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Obama is spreading the word, one Jewish constituency at a time: He has Israel’s back. Obama defended his record on Israel and on religious freedoms on Tuesday during a White House meeting with Orthodox leaders. Challenged by one of those leaders on the efficacy of his… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — President Obama made a simple and very basic mistake when he spoke of Polish death camps during the presentation of a posthumous Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a Polish resistance fighter who was among the first to report German atrocities in his country. The… Read more »

President Obama, shown hosting a Passover Seder at the White House on April 6, 2012, has gained Jewish support in the last half year, according to a new poll. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Obama enjoys the support of three-fifths of American Jews, according to the latest American Jewish Committee survey, a significant improvement over where he stood half a year ago in the organization’s polling. The poll, released Monday, shows Obama with 61 percent of the Jewish vote,… Read more »

President Obama embraces Elie Wiesel before delivering a speech about the Holocaust and its meaning at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, April 23, 2012. (Courtesy USHMM)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — One by one, the emails from the White House arrived in inboxes across Washington on Monday morning, each highlighting a unique initiative toward a different corner of the globe: Syria. Iran. Uganda. The unifying factor was the president’s appearance that day at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) – Pundits have been pointing fingers since a recent poll found that 50 percent of Mississippi and Alabama GOP supporters said they believe that President Obama is a Muslim (with approximately another 40 percent in both states saying they are unsure). Some accuse Republicans of attempting… Read more »