A Holocaust exhibit — and Jewish staffer — are involved in a controversy over the National Archives

In early 2017, a Jewish government employee and former Democratic congressional aide named Ellis Brachman shared a Facebook post featuring a short BBC interview with a Holocaust survivor.  Brachman shared the post one day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and as the newly inaugurated Trump administration was facing blowback for issuing a statement commemorating the […]

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California law against special education funding for religious schools violates constitution, court rules

As Orthodox Jews, Chaya and Jonathan Loffman were deeply committed to having their 3-year-old son educated at a religious school. But when he was diagnosed with autism, they discovered that California law bars religious schools from receiving government funding for special education needs. Faced with this dilemma, the Loffmans enrolled him in Maor Academy, an […]

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Ahead of election, Jewish security groups are monitoring conspiracy theories, Jewish polling sites and foreign interference

Conspiracy theories. Bomb threats. Anti-Israel protests. Street violence.  Jews have been the targets of all these things this year, as reports of antisemitism have spiked during the Israel-Hamas war. Now, less than a week before Election Day, security analysts say those same factors could put Jews at risk during and after the voting — especially […]

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Florida Dems chair Nikki Fried says many Jews have started to ‘question the Democratic Party’

Nikki Fried, the Jewish chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, told Jewish canvassers in her state that the party was losing Jewish voters because of the robust Republican response to pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. Fried’s ostensible pep talk to canvassers seeking to reach undecided Jewish voters, coming Wednesday evening in a Zoom call organized […]

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Should outsiders step in to address campus antisemitism? The question is dividing Jews at the U of Washington.

As a pro-Palestinian encampment settled in on the University of Washington’s Seattle campus this spring, Jewish studies professor Devin Naar was doing something he’d never done before: teaching a class on antisemitism, the first offered at his school in more than a decade. “It was the hardest class I’ve ever taught, and maybe the most […]

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For women using IVF to screen embryos for genetic diseases, these peers can offer support

In March 2020, around the time B. and her husband started planning to have children, they learned they each carried genetic mutations with significantly elevated risks for a variety of cancers. BRCA genetic mutations, which are 10 times more common among Ashkenazi Jews than among the general U.S. population, significantly increase the risks of developing […]

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