WASHINGTON (JTA) – The anonymous Reddit user who is claiming responsibility for the altered video depicting Donald Trump body slamming someone with CNN superimposed over his head has a history of racism, anti-Semitism and incitement to violence, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a one-sentence e-mail to a JTA request for a response […]

NEW YORK CITY (JTA) –The leadership of J Street, the liberal American Jewish Middle East policy group,  recently met with David Friedman, the United States ambassador to Israel who before his nomination had derided the group as worse than Nazi collaborators. “We appreciate the willingness of Ambassador Friedman to meet members of Congress under the auspices of J Street,” said […]

  By BEN SALES NEW YORK CITY (JTA) – For years, Laurie Grauer had waved a rainbow flag emblazoned with a Jewish star at the Chicago Dyke March, sometimes marching near activists waving Palestinian flags. It had never been a problem. But this year, Grauer was confronted by the LGBT parade’s organizers, questioned about her support for Israel and asked […]

DC Report By Douglas Bloomfield I’m not one of those who deplore the president’s affinity for Twitter. I find it can be good for the country. Sometimes. He has repeatedly warned us not to trust what his spokespersons and others say on his behalf because he is thinking too quickly for them to keep up. He has a penchant for […]

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Ivanka Trump said she did not expect the level of “viciousness” her father’s presidency would bring her, but also felt “blessed” by moments, including a private visit to the Western Wall. ”There is a level of viciousness that I was not expecting, I was not expecting the intensity of this experience,” she said Monday morning on “Fox […]

DC Report By Douglas Bloomfield  “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how: but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.” Joseph Stalin Donald Trump’s latest assault on the Constitution is masquerading under the misnomer “Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.” Its real purpose is quite the opposite. That is obvious in whom […]

By ROB GLOSTER SAN FRANCISCO (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) A San Francisco teacher hired to translate into Hebrew President Trump’s “not very eloquent” (as she puts it) speeches recently in Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem said she isn’t proud to be working for this administration and promised “my students get preference, especially over this particular president.” Merav […]

By BEN SALES NEW YORK CITY (JTA) – On the morning of June 5, 1967, as Arab armies and Israel clashed following weeks of tension, Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg sat anxious amid his congregants at daily prayers—fearful that the Jewish people would face extinction for the second time in 25 years. “One of the people said, ‘They’re going to wipe out […]

  By JOSEFIN DOLSTEN NEW YORK CITY (JTA) – Only one religious group in the United States has a federally proclaimed month celebrating its history: the Jews. In 2006, President George W. Bush officially declared May as Jewish American Heritage Month. Yet Jewish American Heritage Month, or JAHM, hardly seems a priority — not in the government, not in the media, […]

DC Report By Douglas M. Bloomfield While Donald Trump was dancing and swinging swords with his fellow billionaires in Saudi Arabia, his budget director and minions were back in Washington slashing the social safety net of millions of poor, elderly, disabled, hungry and disadvantaged Americans. It is no coincidence that his draconian budget was released while Trump was gobbling up the […]