July 01, 2022
By MIKE WAGGENHEIM
(JNS.org) – The New York City Council postponed an early June hearing on anti-Semitism on college campuses to accommodate the schedule of the chancellor of the City University of New York.
At the rescheduled hearing on Thursday, Chancellor Felix Matos Rodríguez was a no-show anyway.
Instead, he sent a lawyer and two witnesses to appear on Zoom, as the council’s Higher Education Committee investigated what it calls “a...
July 01, 2022
By RON KAMPEAS
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Pam Scheininger and J. David Bleich have this much in common: They are Orthodox Jews who are preoccupied with Jewish ethics and teach at New York City law schools.
But when Scheininger looks at an American map, she sees 16 states where Orthodox Jewish women would not be able to have an abortion otherwise sanctioned by Jewish law. Bleich sees a different number —...
June 29, 2022
By JACKIE HAJDENBERG
(JTA) — One of the United States’ largest kosher certifying agencies alleges that JetBlue airlines sold a snack it falsely claimed was certified as kosher.
In a lawsuit filed last Thursday, Kof-K said JetBlue put the agency’s hechsher, or rabbinical approval symbol, on an artichoke snack that the agency never certified as kosher.
The company that makes the artichoke snack, Elma Farms, was not named in the...
June 29, 2022
By RON KAMPEAS
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Agudath Israel of America praised the reversal of a judicial standard that came about as a result of a Supreme Court ruling backing a public high school football coach who prayed on the fifty-yard line.
Abba Cohen, the Washington director for the haredi Orthodox umbrella body, said the group was pleased that Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the decision for the court’s 6-3 conservative...
June 29, 2022
By ANDREW LAPIN
(JTA) — In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist leader and influential figure among the rightmost flank of the Republican Party, told his followers that “Jews stood in the way” of Catholic Supreme Court Justices who “were put on the court to overturn” the 1973 decision that guaranteed the right to an abortion in the United States.
...
June 25, 2022
By DMITRIY SHAPIRO and KASSY DILLON
(JNS.org) – Friday morning rocked the United States when the long-awaited decision by the U.S. Supreme Court came down, declaring an imminent end to abortion. The news was met with both relief and shock, depending on which side of the issue Americans stood. For the most part, Jewish organizations felt angered at what they believe is a civil right being taken away, while...
June 25, 2022
By ANDREW LAPIN
(JTA) – A Democratic member of Boston’s city council said she “should’ve known better” after tweeting an attack on “Zionists” after a federal court upheld an Arkansas law prohibiting Israel boycotts.
“Y’all are letting the Zionists SHAKE YOU DOWN,” Councilor Kendra Lara initially tweeted Thursday. She later deleted the tweet after receiving criticism, including from the director of the New England Anti-Defamation League.
In a subsequent series...
June 25, 2022
By ANDREW LAPIN
(JTA) – The global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement targeting Israel has disavowed a controversial website mapping Boston-area Jewish groups a day after lawmakers urged a federal investigation of the project’s potential to be used by extremist groups.
The announcement by the BDS movement on Wednesday aimed to distance the group from the Mapping Project, an anonymous collective of Boston-area pro-Palestinian activists. The project lists the names and...
June 25, 2022
By CNAAN LIPHSHIZ
(JTA) – The United Nations Human Rights Office concluded that a Palestinian-American journalist was killed by Israeli security forces last month, and said Israel’s failure to conduct a criminal investigation into her death was “deeply disturbing.”
In response, the Israel Defense Forces called the UN probe “biased” and reiterated its call for the Palestinian Authority to hand over the bullet that killed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu...
June 22, 2022
By ANDREW LAPIN
(JTA) – A federal appeals court upheld an Arkansas state law requiring all public contractors to promise they won’t boycott Israel on Wednesday, overturning an earlier ruling that the contract violated the First Amendment.
The ruling by the the St. Louis-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit was a major victory for pro-Israel activists who have pushed around 30 states to adopt so-called “anti-BDS” laws...
