Thursday, April 18th 2024 |
By ALAN SMASON
As news reports came out of Poway, California, it occurred to me that I was experiencing a sickening form of deja vu. Yet another lone, white and radicalized gunman bearing an assault rifle had violated the peacefulness and sanctity of Shabbat in order to kill Jews.
Like others before him who came into schools, accessed public facilities, a nightclub or a theater, he had entered a place...
By RUTH ELLEN GRUBER
BUDAPEST (JTA) – Architecture and built heritage can be powerful symbols.
Notre-Dame de Paris is one of the most famous and familiar buildings in the world, visited by an astonishing 30,000 people a day, or 13 million people a year. It is embedded in global collective consciousness and immortalized around the world in a zillion holiday snaps, videos, works of fine art and memories.
My Facebook and Twitter...
By BEN COHEN
(JNS.org) — When the fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange first holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London seven years ago, “Brexit” was an unknown word, Donald Trump was still hosting “The Apprentice,” and the Iran nuclear deal was just a twinkle in the eye of U.S. President Barack Obama. So when, last week, British police officers carried a horizontal Assange out of the embassy’s doors and...
By RABBI AVRAM MLOTEK
NEW YORK (JTA) – A queer friend of mine from a haredi Orthodox background had posed a query publicly on social media. She had attended a conference on LGBTQ inclusion. There she learned a practice of certain Catholic priests who described going into gay bars in full clerical garb: They would sit in the bar, and when queer Catholics approached them, the priests would affirm God’s...
By ROKHL KAFRISSEN
(JTA) — The high-profile allegations of sexual harassment against Michael Steinhardt are an opportunity for us to deconstruct how money, power and sexism have warped the nonprofit world in the shape of its largest donors.
Take, for example, the case of Sheila Katz, a vice president at Hillel International who spent four years trying to hold Steinhardt accountable for sexually harassing her. Though Hillel investigated her allegations, she...
By LARRY GREENFIELD
LOS ANGELES (JTA) – AIPAC has long promoted bipartisanship as the key to maintaining broad support for the U.S.-Israel relationship. Members of Congress from both parties regularly attend its annual policy conference, which concluded Tuesday, and the organization’s biggest legislative priority, securing foreign aid for Israel, is overwhelmingly supported in both chambers of Congress.
In AIPAC’s worldview, every legislator is a friend or a potential friend.
This...
By JONATHAN TOBIN
(JNS.org) — It was a day for Israelis to cheer the unprecedented degree of closeness between their nation and its sole superpower ally. Using his favorite form of communication, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted a clear intention to discard yet another longstanding U.S. policy in the Middle East. Trump’s declaration that he was going recognize Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights is correctly interpreted as a blatant...
By EMILY RAY BARAF
(JTA) — Purim is often filled with boisterous celebrations, drinking and an embrace of the otherwise taboo.
Yet the Book of Esther recounts a traditional story that confines to the most damaging stereotypes about women, especially in its portrayal of queens Esther and Vashti. In the traditional reading of the Purim story, the reserved Queen Esther (her name literally means “hidden”) manages to save the Jewish people...
By LAURA E. ADKINS
NEW YORK (JTA) — Gallup’s 2019 World Affairs Survey confirms something that’s held true for decades: Most American voters, whether Democrat or Republican, support and sympathize with Israel.
Reading the report amid the national uproar over Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s tweets about the Israel lobby, several writers have focused on what they see as declining support for Israel among liberal Democrats, who represent 56 percent of...
By BEN COHEN
(JNS.org) — By the time America woke up on Friday, Mar. 15, Google’s search engine was jammed with news of a mass shooting at another place of worship in the world. Counts of 49 dead and dozens wounded were being reported at the Al Noor Mosque in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. (Editor’s note: The death toll rose to 50 on Sunday.)
Doubtless, many people were...
