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‘They are the real men of Israel’: My cousin was held captive with hostages who died in Gaza — hear her words
Every day, family members of hostages — like myself — wake up to face a ticking time bomb. We check the news with a lump in our throats: What will today bring? Earlier this week, that daily news made my heart stop. In just one day, we learned that four male hostages — Chaim Peri, 79, Amiram...
Student groups at Baruch College stage protest against Hillel, adding to growing trend
Pro-Palestinian student groups at Baruch College staged a protest against the school’s Hillel on Wednesday, accusing the Jewish campus group of murdering children and supporting fascism and genocide. The demonstration — in which protesters scuffled with pro-Israel counterprotesters and were arrested — appeared to be the first across the City University of New York system...
The Jewish Sport Report: This Jewish publicist is Hall of Fame-bound
Hello! We’ve got a fun one for you today. Orthodox MLB prospect and Team Israel pitcher Jacob Steinmetz has been heating up in Single A: in his first nine starts this season, the 20-year-old has 50 strikeouts in 45 innings with a 3.60 ERA and a 2-2 record. He’s been so good, in fact, that...
Rep. Ritchie Torres slams ‘blithering idiots’ behind the secret Israeli influence op that targeted him
New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress, said a reported clandestine campaign by the Israeli government that aimed to influence him and other Black Democratic U.S. lawmakers was “embarrassing” and “racist.” The effort, according to a report this week in The New York Times, was orchestrated by Israel’s Diaspora Ministry...
Why are American Jewish institutions ignoring the hostage families?
This week, the families of Israeli hostages issued an urgent appeal to American Jewish organizations: “We are calling upon you as the leaders of our brethren in the United States — Stand with us at this most critical moment and publicly call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the hostage release deal that is...
A century-old Jewish tale of demonic possession — yet one that’s just as relevant today
Fo“Anything you do needs to speak to the people of today,” Igor Golyak, the artistic director at the Arlekin Players Theatre company in Needham, Mass., told me. “I don’t know how to do a play without modernizing it.” he said. “If a play is done without modernizing it, it means it’s a museum piece. And...
The Jewish problem with Trump supporters saying his guilty verdict was ‘rigged’
When the guilty verdicts in former President Donald Trump’s recent New York trial were handed down, Trump and his supporters — including some in my own Orthodox community — rejected the decree, saying that the legal system had been rigged against him. What came to my mind was a passage from the Talmud that describes...
Some Jewish groups protest Biden’s executive order on immigration, but others are staying silent
When President Joe Biden announced a new executive order this week effectively closing the U.S.-Mexico border to asylum seekers, the timing of the act sounded the alarm for Jewish immigration advocates. The order comes following a months-long surge of border crossings from Mexico, and as Biden faces low poll numbers on the issue. But some...
In the campus protests, Jews got outorganized
As a proud American Zionist who would be pleased to see my children serve in the Israel Defense Forces, I’ve been shocked by some of the wild claims of the campus protesters, including those that Israel is engaged in genocide. I have watched as well-meaning students espouse hateful ideas as truth. But I am not...
NAACP alters statement calling for end to weapon shipments to Israel after criticism
The NAACP altered a watershed statement calling for a “permanent ceasefire” in Gaza and the suspension of American weapon shipments to Israel Friday morning to specify it that it only wanted to stop the shipment of weapons “targeting civilians.” “We didn’t want folks to be confused as to exactly what we were calling for because...
Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress on July 24
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress on July 24, his fourth time appearing before the legislative body. The Netanyahu speech, coming against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, is meant to demonstrate American support for Israel at a time when Israel has come under widespread...
What’s behind the wave of antisemitic violence in Canada?
“Antisemitism Notebook” is a weekly email newsletter from the Forward, sign-up here to receive the full newsletter in your inbox each Thursday I have watched with alarm in recent weeks as a spate of antisemitic vandalism has swept Canada. A synagogue in Vancouver, where I went to college, was lit on fire last week, days after Jewish...
The NFL rookie with the name Jews cannot say aloud. (Or can they?)
Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain, the Ten Commandments tell us. But what if the Lord’s name is lining up at wide receiver? It’s a conundrum Jewish football fans could face this year: The Indianapolis Colts signed a contract on Thursday with a rookie named Adonai Mitchell. Adonai is a Hebrew name...
Claudia Sheinbaum will be North America’s first Jewish head of state. What will it take to elect a second?
This week, Mexico elected a Jewish woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum. Why does it still feel so impossible to imagine the U.S. doing the same thing? While Mexican cultural hegemony might be very different from the United States, Mexico’s secular Jewish communities, like the one in which Sheinbaum grew up, share many commonalities with ours. There...
Meta is weighing whether ‘from the river to the sea’ is hate speech. But will it matter?
When Meta’s Oversight Board, which adjudicates controversial moderation decisions on the platform, asked the public to weigh in on whether “from the river to the sea” should be considered hate speech, they got thousands of responses — the second highest they’d ever received. (Trump’s temporary ban from the platform got first.) An outsize proportion of...
Israeli civilians will determine Israel’s recovery from the war, not its leaders
Allowing aid convoys to pass into Gaza unobstructed won’t end the war, bring back the hostages, or prevent further humanitarian disaster within the coastal Palestinian enclave. But when a group of peace activists in purple T-shirts managed to distract a band of extremist settlers on Sunday, ensuring that dozens of trucks filled with food could...
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