Author: Sara Wood

This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with teens across the world to report on issues that impact their lives. (JTA) — After wearing his yarmulke all day at his Orthodox yeshiva on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Zac Jacobs takes it off before boarding the 6 train home. […]

(JTA) — Thousands of women who serve as Chabad emissaries gathered this week in Brooklyn for a conference that’s meant to provide a mix of professional development and networking opportunities. But on the conference’s first afternoon on Thursday, many of the attendees came together not to meet but to mourn. Standing under an overcast sky […]

(JTA) — Police in San Francisco have arrested a man they believe is responsible for shooting blanks during a study session inside a Jewish center there. The San Francisco Police Department announced an arrest early Saturday in the incident, which took place on Wednesday but was not reported to authorities until the following day. They […]

(JTA) – Organizers of protests on behalf of Soviet Jewry in San Francisco in the early 1970s might have bolstered crowds by secretly recruiting participants from Jews for Jesus. The explosive revelation that Jewish leaders turned to a Christian missionary group for help appears in a 1973 FBI memo that the Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently […]

(JTA) – A candidate for chair of the Michigan Republican Party who faced criticism after inviting a Messianic “rabbi” to offer a prayer for the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018 has now announced that she is a “Jewish Messianic believer of Christ.” Lena Epstein, who was raised Jewish, made the comments Tuesday […]

(JTA) — NBA star Kyrie Irving’s tenure in Brooklyn has come to an end, but the drawn-out saga over his antisemitism scandal apparently has not. NBA reporter Sam Amick pointed out in a podcast published Tuesday that Irving had deleted his November Instagram post apologizing for sharing an antisemitic film on Twitter. Irving had been […]

(JTA) – An Ohio woman who alleged six years ago that she had been fired because she was an observant Jew has won $1.1 million in damages after a federal jury sided with her. Kimberly Edelstein had been working as a magistrate in Butler County, Ohio, when she asked her supervisor — a judge — […]

(JTA) – A university in Oregon that fired a Jewish professor after he reported several incidents, including purported antisemitic remarks made by its president, has settled with the professor. Linfield University, a private school in McMinnville, will pay $1 million to English professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner for his wrongful termination in 2021. Pollack-Pelzner had accused the […]

(JTA) — Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is extending his focus on Holocaust remembrance by inviting a Washington, D.C.-area survivor to be his guest at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech Tuesday evening. Ruth Cohen, who survived multiple concentration camps including Auschwitz, will join Emhoff at the annual policy address in Washington. Emhoff first […]

(JTA) — It’s “ridiculous” to doubt that Jews like money, popular podcaster Joe Rogan said on his show on Saturday.  Rogan was discussing the 2019 tweet by Rep. Ilhan Oman in which she she wrote that pro-Israel votes in Congress were “all about the Benjamins.” That tweet, for which she has apologized, was one of […]