Brandeis University, known for its proud past, is reimagining itself for the future. Located in a Boston suburb, Brandeis opened in 1948 at a time when Jews and other minorities faced open discrimination at many American universities. Named for Justice Louis Brandeis — the first Jewish member of the U.S. Supreme Court — the university’s founders pioneered […]
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SOUTHFIELD, Mich. – President Donald Trump addressed a Michigan synagogue by video Wednesday evening as part of an event orchestrated by Leo Terrell, chair of the administration’s task force for combating antisemitism, and the Zionist Organization of America. Trump’s greeting, which was prerecorded, was met with applause from the estimated 500 Jews who had come […]
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SOMERVILLE, Mass. — Lawmakers in Somerville Massachusetts have delayed action on an Israeli divestment proposal to allow for more research into the question of what businesses would be banned and what the financial impact would be on the city. Somerville’s Legislative Matters Committee debated the issue on Tuesday night after its City Council voted in […]
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Bomb threat hoaxes targeting four U.S. Jewish day schools resulted in evacuations and a lockdown within the last week. Hoaxers called in threats two minutes apart on Oct. 9 to two Brooklyn yeshivas, the Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman High School and the United Talmudical Academy of Williamsburg, News 12 reported. Police later determined the […]
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Ziggy Valdez, a nonbinary Mexican Jew studying to become a rabbi, was born in Illinois and grew up moving around the country as the child of a Navy father, always attached to a Reform synagogue. Valdez, who uses they/them pronouns, has Mexican roots on both sides of the family and has been “physically brown since […]
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Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff reaffirmed Israel’s right to combat Hamas in Gaza while stressing that its use of U.S. weapons must be in compliance with international law during a debate on Tuesday ahead of the Nov. 3 elections. His opponent, Republican Rep. Mike Collins, seeks to unseat Ossoff in a race that could help determine […]
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One year after Jewish Currents editor-at-large Arielle Angel called for “new Jewish institutions” that have no attachment to Israel or Zionism, more than 100 Jews crammed into a Victorian house-turned-event space in central Brooklyn in hopes of creating them. The event was billed as a bootcamp for people hoping to get fledgling Jewish groups off […]
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Philadelphia’s Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History is moving closer to becoming part of the Smithsonian Institution at a moment of significant upheaval for the storied museum network. A new congressional commission will study whether to make the museum part of the Smithsonian. Its members were sworn in Tuesday, when they also held their […]
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SOMERVILLE, Mass. — The issue of divestment from Israel returns to the Somerville City Council in Massachusetts on Tuesday night as lawmakers plan to discuss how to implement a nonbinding ballot question on the matter that passed last year. The divestment push has divided the city of more than 84,000 residents, which has a long-standing […]
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BOSTON — In the middle of a conversation about her future children, it dawned on Leah Robbins that the school she imagined for them did not exist. Robbins envisioned a Jewish school where children studied Jewish texts, history and observance, as she did at the school run out of her Conservative synagogue in northern Florida. […]
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