Author: Sara Wood

(JTA) — A conference of Jewish educators became first responders of sorts when Colorado Gov. Jared Polis had an emergency: The Jewish Democrat was about to be sworn in for a second term and he couldn’t find his Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible. It ended well — “when looking for a Tanakh, there’s never one too […]

(JTA) — Dick Savitt, the Jewish tennis champion who won both the Australian Open and Wimbledon Championships in 1951, died Jan. 6 at 95 at his home in New York. He was the first Jewish athlete to win either tournament. A native of Bayonne, New Jersey, Savitt never took a tennis lesson — his primary […]

WASHINGTON (JTA) –Republican Party officials in Rep. George Santos’ Long Island district called on the serial fabricator to quit, citing among other lies his claims to Jewish and Holocaust heritage. The call Wednesday by officials of the Nassau County Republican party was significant because the Republican majority in the U.S. House of representatives is precarious […]

(JTA) — When Talia Avrahami was asked to resign from a job teaching in an Orthodox Jewish day school after people there found out she was transgender, she was devastated. But she hoped to be able to turn to her synagogue in Washington Heights, where she had found a home for the last year and […]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — With a new right-wing government in Israel raising alarm bells among many in the United States, the timing seemed ripe for a gathering by AIPAC, which regularly convenes bigwigs to talk about the U.S.-Israel relationship. But the group’s conference this week in Washington is focusing not on that relationship but on American […]

(JTA) – The Israeli ministry responsible for engaging with the half of the world’s Jews who don’t live in Israel has gotten a new name — and a leader who disdains the values of many American Jews. Amichai Chikli announced during his swearing-in ceremony Monday that his ministry was changing its name from the Ministry of […]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol wanted to test how fast it took social media to get to radical content. The answer, when it came to TikTok and Nazis, was just over an hour. It took TikTok 75 minutes to deliver Nazi content to a new […]

(JTA) — The judge in the civil case brought against the organizers of the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in the death of a protester has slashed the penalties awarded to the victims. Victims in the case, brought by two Jewish attorneys who have made it their mission to hit neo-Nazis […]

(JTA) — As the sports world continues to react to NFL player Damar Hamlin’s sudden cardiac arrest during a game on Monday night, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is pitching into a fundraiser campaign — with a donation inspired by his Jewish identity. Kraft and the Patriots donated $18,003 to an online fundraiser Hamlin […]

(JTA) — Binya Kóatz remembers the first time she saw a woman wearing tzitzit. While attending Friday night services at a Jewish Renewal synagogue in Berkeley, she noticed the long ritual fringes worn by some observant Jews — historically men — dangling below a friend’s short shorts. “That was the first time I really realized […]