Category: Other

(JTA) – Harvard University President Claudine Gay has resigned in the wake of plagiarism allegations and months-long criticism of her response to allegations of antisemitism at the school.  Gay is the second Ivy League university president to step down following congressional testimony on campus antisemitism last month that drew intense criticism. University of Pennsylvania President…

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The official “readouts” describing conversations between world leaders are usually dry, information-deficient affairs, but the ones between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been telling a story of diverging views on Israel’s war in Gaza. Their most recent conversation, on Dec. 23, is an example: According to the Israeli…

(JTA) – When Shenna Bellows was appointed Maine’s secretary of state in 2020, she described how her previous job at a Holocaust education center made her especially suited to the role. Bellows, the former executive director of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine, tweeted that her work with Holocaust survivors “has taught me…

(JTA) — Herb Kohl, the longtime Jewish senator from Wisconsin who loved his Milwaukee hometown so much he bought its basketball team to keep it there, has died at 88. Kohl was known for his soft-spoken, unobtrusive approach as a philanthropist, a retail mogul and a senator, an outlook he said he learned from his…

WASHINGTON (JTA) — A number of national Jewish groups have come to the defense of a Muslim judicial nominee, saying Republican lawmakers inappropriately grilled him about his views on terrorism, Israel and antisemitism. Adeel Mangi, a New Jersey lawyer who would be the first Muslim to serve on a federal appellate court, faced fierce questioning from…

(New York Jewish Week) — Critics blasted New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a Christmas message comparing Jesus to the Palestinians, with at least one saying it invoked the historic charge that the Jews killed Jesus.  Drawing parallels between Jesus’ persecutors and present-day Israel, Ocasio-Cortez wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday that Jesus was…

(JTA) — Dean Phillips is running for president. And he wants to talk. Talking runs in the Jewish Minnesota congressman’s family — his grandmother is Dear Abby. And he’s friends with Ilhan Omar, despite their polar opposite views on a range of issues, including Israel, because they like to talk things through. Now, Phillips, 54,…

(New York Jewish Week) – The day before winter break starts is often an exciting one at school, with pizza parties, movies in class and other laid-back activities. But at SAR Academy, a Modern Orthodox K-8 day school in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale, the air was abuzz for a different reason: Their congressman, Ritchie…

(JTA) — After days of negotiations, the United States allowed the passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution urging the acceleration of assistance to Gaza Strip Palestinians, but stopping short of calling for a ceasefire. The resolution passed Friday called for “for urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also…

(JTA) – A global bestseller by a Jewish Holocaust victim; a novel by a beloved and politically conservative Jewish American writer; a memoir of growing up mixed-race and Jewish; and a contemporary novel about a high-achieving Jewish family are among the nearly 700 books a Florida school district removed from classroom libraries this year in…