October 27, 2020
By BEN SALES
(JTA) — Nearly half of Americans don’t know what the phrase “anti-Semitism” means.
That’s one takeaway from two surveys published Monday by the American Jewish Committee. The surveys asked Jews and the general American public about anti-Semitism in the United States.
The Jewish survey found that a large majority of Jews consider anti-Semitism a problem, and that most see it as a problem on the right and...
October 27, 2020
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Hours after she was confirmed in a narrow party-line vote in the U.S. Senate, Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in at the White House as a Supreme Court justice.
Barrett, a conservative Roman Catholic who replaces Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal Jewish justice who died last month, was sworn in Monday evening by Justice Clarence Thomas at an event where President Donald Trump presided.
Barely an hour...
October 24, 2020
For the first time in its more than a century of service to the worldwide Jewish community, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) announced the selection of a woman, Ariel Zwang, as its CEO.
Zwang, a highly visible Jewish figure in New York, will be leaving her present post as CEO of Safe Horizon, the former Victim Services Agency, a social services agency that sheltered and protected victims of...
October 23, 2020
(JTA) — Ivanka Trump visited the tomb of the Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as an election approaches that could oust her father from the presidency or give him another four years.
Smartphone video posted on social media captured President Donald Trump’s daughter emerging, masked, on Thursday night from the “ohel,” a modest structure in Queens where Schneerson is buried with his father-in-law. The structure is adjacent to a...
October 23, 2020
By BEN SALES
(JTA) — The 19-year-old man alleged to have plotted to kill Joe Biden was the son of a prominent Jewish attorney who helped broker the first meeting between a U.S. president and the Dalai Lama.
News broke Friday about the May arrest of Alexander Hillel Treisman, a teenager who a court document says had purchased an automatic rifle and traveled to multiple states, and who allegedly had...
October 23, 2020
(JTA) — During the past week, Rep. Adam Schiff’s opponent falsely accused him of being related to George Soros, the Jewish Democratic mega-donor who is a constant target of right-wing criticism.
In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Schiff said the Soros meme fit into a pattern of bigotry condoned by the very top of the Republican party. Schiff accused not only President Donald Trump but Republican congressional leaders...
October 16, 2020
(JTA) — Twitter will now ban posts that deny the Holocaust.
Bloomberg News reported Wednesday that a Twitter spokesperson said posts that “deny or distort” violent events including the Holocaust would be banned.
Twitter is the second major social media network to ban Holocaust denial this week. Facebook announced on Monday that it would ban posts that deny or distort the Holocaust, two years after Mark Zuckerberg said Holocaust denial...
October 11, 2020
DAN BAUM, a freelancer journalist who wrote for New Yorker magazine, extensively chronicling New Orleans and its recovery from the effects of Hurricane Katrina and the related breeches of drainage canals that flooded the city, died at his home in Boulder, CO. on October 8. He was 64.
While Baum published “Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Life and Death in New Orleans,” under his own byline of Dan Baum, it was...
October 09, 2020
(JTA) — Take your pick: Crystal method, or Kristol, Bill’s persuasion.
Billy Crystal, the actor and comedian, and Bill Kristol, the onetime top adviser to Republican officials who has become a prominent “Never Trumper” joined in an ad released this week to explain why they were voting for Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee hoping to oust Donald Trump on Nov. 3.
“We never agree on anything!” says Crystal who pretends...
October 09, 2020
(JTA) — One of the country’s largest cemetery operators included a quote from Heinrich Himmler in a calendar it distributed as a marketing tool.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the November page in the StoneMor Inc. 2020 calendar depicts an older couple walking arm in arm alongside the quote, “My honor is my loyalty,” which is credited to Himmler, one of the architects of the Holocaust. The quote has become...
