Author: Sara Wood

A Maryland man who sent more than 40 threatening letters to Jewish institutions, including the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, was sentenced to three years in prison Monday. Clift Seferlis, 55, of Garrett Park, Maryland, was sentenced to 37 months in prison and three years of supervised release as well as […]

Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman and the last person still detained in the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus protests last spring, was released from ICE custody on Monday. Kordia’s release came weeks after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani petitioned President Donald Trump in person on her behalf. Mamdani celebrated the development in a […]

A string of recent synagogue attacks across North America and Europe has left security officials sounding the alarm bells. “We are in the midst of the most elevated and complex threat environment the Jewish community and this country has seen in modern history,” said Kerry Sleeper, chief of threat management and information sharing for the […]

The Trump administration’s Religious Liberties Commission was wracked again this week over anti-Israel sentiment, as a second affiliated individual has exited while claiming it had been hijacked by a “Zionist political agenda.” Sameerah Munshi, a Muslim member of a board that advises the commission, announced late Thursday that she would be stepping down. Her reason, […]

Oklahoma’s attorney general is accusing a state board of trying to rig the legal fight over a proposed Jewish charter school — a dispute that could open the door for publicly funded religious charter schools across the United States. Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a motion this week asking an Oklahoma County district judge to […]

The Department of Homeland Security has identified the man killed while attacking a suburban Detroit synagogue as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a U.S. citizen who immigrated from Lebanon 15 years ago. Ghazali, 41, was a resident of Dearborn Heights, Michigan, according to its mayor, Mo Baydoun. Baydoun said in a statement that members of Ghazali’s family, […]

The suspected assailant, armed with rifles and smoke bombs, who rammed into Temple Israel on Thursday encountered a synagogue that was well prepared for just such an attack. He hit and injured the congregation’s security director with his car as he plowed through the synagogue’s doors and drove down a hallway. But he didn’t manage […]

A shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security since Feb. 14 is halting the review of millions of dollars in security funding for nonprofits, leaving Jewish institutions and other vulnerable groups in limbo at a moment of heightened concern about antisemitic threats.  The most recent threat came Thursday when an armed assailant rammed his vehicle […]

A large school district serving Oakland, California, is effectively defying state efforts to make it address antisemitism on its campuses, according to a lawsuit filed this week by the California Department of Education. In January, the department ordered the Oakland Unified School District to send letters to families and staff condemning antisemitism and take several […]