Author: Sara Wood

Like many American Jews, Rabbi Shai Held has devoted considerable energy since Oct. 7, 2023, to praying for the release of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. Still, when Israel and Hamas struck a deal for some of them to be freed last month, he felt grief. That’s because the deal required Israel to release […]

A man who fired a gun in the air outside of an Albany, New York, synagogue while shouting “Free Palestine!” has pleaded guilty to hate crime and firearms charges. The Justice Department announced on Tuesday that Mufid Fawaz Alkhader, 29, had pleaded guilty to obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs by threat of force […]

The Trump administration has ignited criticism by giving a high-level State Department portfolio to a man whom Donald Trump’s White House fired in 2018 for speaking to a conference of white nationalists. Darren Beattie is Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s pick for acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a position that would require […]

President Donald Trump has promised a tougher fight against campus antisemitism than what his predecessor Joe Biden offered. But on Monday he signaled that at least one aspect of Biden’s approach would continue: Title VI civil rights investigations. The federal Department of Education on Monday announced investigations into alleged “widespread antisemitic harassment” at five universities: […]

At least one member of South Carolina’s Holocaust education council has resigned after the group’s chair edited a rabbi’s “political” speech commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz out of the event’s TV broadcast. But the council chair said in an interview that she stands by her decision, and said Rabbi Sam Rose’s speech tying the Holocaust […]

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set off for Washington, D.C., on Sunday, he told Israelis that he was looking forward to reconnecting with an old friend. “I’m leaving for a very important meeting with President Trump in Washington,” he said in a statement. “The fact that this would be President Trump’s first meeting with […]

After trying for five years to dissuade lawmakers in Missouri from enacting laws he believed would endanger his son and other transgender youth in the state, Russel Neiss finally admitted defeat. The state’s ban in 2023 on transgender medical care for minors devastated Neiss, but it also came with something of an upside for him: […]

One of the flight attendants killed in the recent plane crash in Washington, D.C., was an alumnus of a Jewish youth group with a passion for travel and a talent for comedy. Ian Epstein, one of the four flight attendants on American Eagle Flight 5342, was an alumnus of the pluralist Jewish youth group BBYO, […]