U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin never had an easy path to the Senate, but a win for the Jewish Democratic Congresswoman looks tougher in these last days before the election than it did just a month ago. A new Suffolk University/USA Today poll of 500 likely voters has Slotkin leading Republican Mike Rogers by less than...

(JTA) — Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson condemned the shooting of an Orthodox Jewish man who was walking to synagogue, but drew blowback for not mentioning the victim’s Jewish identity. Other political leaders have also condemned the shooting, which took place Saturday in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of West Rogers Park. The suspect, Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi,...

Two new bronze statues have popped up next to the National Mall in D.C., hoping to join the ranks of so many grand, iconic American monuments. One is a shiny dollop of poop, placed atop a bronze replica of Nancy Pelosi’s desk. The other is a tiki torch. Both have plaques, like any good art...

Six members of my family were brutally kidnapped by Hamas and taken hostage to Gaza last autumn. Now, the same air of uncertainty that has consumed me every day since Oct. 7 has been amplified by the added tension of our U.S. election. Five of my family members were freed from captivity during the one...

A new social media campaign is encouraging Jewish voters in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn to “#DoItForTheShchuna,” using the Hebrew word for a religious neighborhood. Exactly 50 years ago, in the leadup to Election Day in Nov. 1974, the Lubavitcher Rebbe told his community in their native Yiddish to go out and vote. Some...

Jason Alexander showed up to a Zoom call with a full beard. Was it for a role? “If it’s not, I don’t know what I’m doing,” the Tony winner and eight-time Emmy nominee said from his home. “It’s like a pet. You have to walk it and groom it and let it play with other...

(JTA) — KYIV, Ukraine — A Jewish school in the Ukrainian capital suffered “significant structural damage” after being hit by a Russian drone early on Wednesday, according to the Kyiv Jewish community operating the center. The Israeli ambassador in Ukraine, Michael Brodsky, and local authorities confirmed the strike on the Perlina school, part of the...

(JTA) — As a pro-Palestinian encampment settled in on the University of Washington’s Seattle campus this spring, Jewish studies professor Devin Naar was doing something he’d never done before: teaching a class on antisemitism, the first offered at his school in more than a decade. “It was the hardest class I’ve ever taught, and maybe...

A Bintel Brief, Yiddish for a bundle of letters, has been solving reader dilemmas since 1906. Send yours via email, social media or this form. Dear Bintel,  I am on my synagogue’s board. A man on the board makes me uncomfortable. His wife was my mentor when I first started on the board, and I...

Authorities investigating attempted arson at ballot boxes in the Pacific Northwest reportedly discovered incendiary devices marked “Free Gaza” in all three instances. Two incidents in Portland, Oregon, and nearby Vancouver, Washington, occurred about an hour apart early Oct. 28, officials said Monday in a news conference. In Vancouver, hundreds of ballots were destroyed, while in...

The Anti-Defamation League joined in the criticism after former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally at Madison Square Garden Sunday, which featured virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric and a comedian who targeted minority groups. But now the ADL is itself the target of criticism for failing to call out the rally as a Trump event. Instead it described...

“America is one giant Shtetl, where I swear life is great,” a man sings in Yiddish as he and his young daughter approach Ellis Island: “A shtetl iz amerike / A mekhaye, khlebn.” These are lyrics from a Yiddish theater folk song as they appear in the 1998 musical Ragtime. Latvian Jewish immigrant Tateh and...

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff delivered a major address on antisemitism in Pittsburgh last night, trying to convince Jewish swing voters in Pennsylvania that his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, is a safer choice for them than former President Donald Trump. Despite Trump’s various offensive comments about Jews, a recent poll of Jewish voters by the...

(JTA) — WARSAW, Poland — In the heart of the former Warsaw Ghetto, where Jews were killed and their neighborhood razed during World War II, a Jewish community has never recovered — but a museum has for a decade drawn visitors to learn about their history. The Polin Museum is marking 10 years since opening...

Kink is less taboo than ever today. Phrases like “don’t yuck somebody’s yum” are part of everyday parlance. 50 Shades of Grey was a huge hit as both book and movie. Feeld, a kinky dating app, just started a glossy print magazine; The New York Times covered the launch party, where the city’s youngest and...

Late Night with Seth Meyers could have been called Late Night with Seth Trakianski. Meyers’ great-grandfather was Moses Menachem Trakianski, but changed his surname to Meyers when he immigrated to Pittsburgh, where he became a peddler. Meyers discovered this family lineage in a 2019 episode of Finding Your Roots, the PBS ancestry show hosted by...

In a split illuminating the difficult choice facing Democrats who supported the pro-Palestinian Uncommitted movement in the primaries, one of the movement’s co-founders will vote for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris while the other plans to leave the top line of her ballot blank. The dilemma: vote for Harris, who dismissed their demand...

A couple of weeks ago, Marshall Curry saw a spike in search interest in his Oscar-nominated 2017 documentary short A Night at the Garden, about the pro-Nazi 1939 rally at Madison Square Garden. The reason soon became clear: Donald Trump was using the venue as a staging ground for a massive rally to finish off...

Menachem Mendel Schneerson: Becoming the Messiah By Ezra Glinter Yale Univesity Press, 320 pages, $28 Jewish Lives, the laudable series of short, reflective biographies published by Yale University Press, includes volumes on such canonical figures as Solomon, Elijah and Maimonides. But it has also generously counted Bugsy Siegel, Marcel Proust, and Ayn Rand as “Jewish.”...