Author: Sara Wood

WASHINGTON (JTA) — For more than a week, American Jewish groups have debated how and whether to welcome Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, as he visits Washington, D.C.  On Sunday night, that debate culminated in protests, arrests, boycotts — and a speech by Smotrich urging American Jews to remain loyal to the Jewish state.  […]

(JTA) — The organizers of the deadly neo-Nazi Charlottesville rally in 2017 have been ordered to pay close to $5 million to plaintiffs for legal costs in a lawsuit, adding to the penalties already facing the mostly bankrupt crew of extremists. The rally organizers were sued later in 2017 by Charlottesville residents who suffered trauma […]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sixteen Jewish Democrats called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suspend legislation that would remove much of the Israeli Supreme Court’s power, and to work out a compromise with the opposition. The letter sent Thursday cited efforts by Israeli President Isaac Herzog to convene the governing coalition and opposition for negotiations. […]

(JTA) — Aaron Davidson has never been to Israel. He isn’t Jewish. He began serving in his position, Utah County clerk, just two months ago. But the policies he oversees in his office in Provo, Utah, could have an impact more than 7,000 miles away — in the halls of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, in […]

(JTA) – An investigation into sexual abuse and misconduct in the Conservative movement’s youth group programs over the past seven decades identified an “overly sexualized culture” and collected accounts of alleged abuse from 40 victims.  Most of the allegations included in the investigation took place between 1987 and 2019 in the New York City area, […]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Four states have presidential primaries that fall on the first day of Passover next year and legislation has been introduced in at least two of them, Maryland and Pennsylvania, to change the date. The four states listed on the website of the National Conference of State Legislatures as having presidential primaries on […]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, is spearheading a letter from Democrats urging President Joe Biden to “use all diplomatic tools available” to get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt his controversial legislation to sap the power of Israel’s top court. The letter also opposes […]

(JTA) — As part of his journey after a tumultuous decade and a half in the spotlight, former New York Mets star Darryl Strawberry is speaking at a pro-Israel event in his second career as an evangelical minister. Strawberry, an eight-time MLB All-Star-turned-traveling-preacher, will be a panelist on Thursday at Extending the Branches of Zionism, […]

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) — Six hours of hockey games squeezed in between Saturday night and Sunday may seem like suboptimal scheduling, but for Alex Ottensoser, a forward on the North […]

(JTA) — When Alyza Lewin became a bat mitzvah in 1977, the fact that she had a ritual ceremony at all was still relatively revolutionary in Orthodox circles. But she took the rite of passage a step further, and did something that, for Orthodox Jews at the time, was considered the exclusive province of men. […]