Author: Sara Wood

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he would be releasing a “comprehensive” strategy to combat antisemitism, citing incidents of anti-Jewish attacks from across the political spectrum in an apparent acknowledgment of concerns from the Jewish community that the focus should not be solely on the far right. A senior official told the […]

(JTA) — Ahead of Passover 2020 — as life worldwide ground to an abrupt halt in the face of a rapidly spreading pandemic and people faced the specter of empty grocery shelves, or staying confined at home — a range of rabbis tried to make it a little easier to observe the holiday. Long lists […]

(JTA) — For years, a growing number of Jews have issued the same public request ahead of Passover: Christians, please don’t hold your own seders glorifying Jesus.  Now, some Christian clergy are passing that same message onto their followers. Last week, the Episcopal bishop of Missouri, the Rev. Deon K. Johnson, posted an open letter […]

(JTA) – A year of strained relations between the University of Vermont and its Jewish community has led to the school resolving a federal antisemitism complaint and pledging to do more to protect its Jewish students — including from anti-Zionist rhetoric. The university and the U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that they had reached […]

(JTA) — Nikki Fried, who chairs Florida’s Democratic Party, was arrested at a protest for abortion rights in the state capital, along with 10 other demonstrators. The protest on Monday night, which took place outside Tallahassee City Hall, was in opposition to a proposed six-week abortion ban in Florida that the state senate passed Monday […]

This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives. (JTA) — Like many Jewish teens, Ash Brave was nervous for their b’nai mitzvah. Memorizing the Torah portion, sending invitations, planning a party: It’s a lot for […]

(JTA) — Shayndi Raice, a Wall Street Journal reporter based in Israel, is hoping that Jews around the world dedicate a portion of their Passover seder this week to one of her colleagues, currently detained in a Russian prison. “This Passover, please consider setting a place at your Seder table for @evangershkovich,” Raice tweeted on Sunday. […]

(JTA) — Pamela Stevenson, a Democratic state representative in Kentucky, was chatting recently with her friend Zahava Kurland about one of Kurland’s duties at her Orthodox synagogue: preparing the dead for burial. “She was trying to explain to me certain things that had to be done,” Stevenson, who is also a Black Baptist minister, told […]

NEW YORK (JTA) — What should happen when a yeshiva does not teach its students the legally required amount of secular studies? And who should be held responsible: the school, or the parents who chose it? Both of those questions were at the heart of a bombshell ruling in a New York state court last […]

(JTA) — A Manhattan grand jury has indicted former President Donald Trump in connection with his role in a payoff to an adult film star about their sexual encounter, making history and prompting Trump to once again invoke the name of a Jewish billionaire who is at the center of antisemitic conspiracy theories. The indictment […]