Category: Local

The call went out over email, text and WhatsApp on Sunday night: Come to Huyler Park in downtown Tenafly at 5 a.m. to celebrate — Edan Alexander was coming home. Born and raised by Israeli parents in Tenafly, Alexander, 21, joined the Israel Defense Forces after graduating from Tenafly High School. He was taken hostage […]

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has lifted a freeze on security funding for religious institutions this week, ending a months-long pause that drew alarm from Jewish groups that had advocated for expanded federal security funding. The Nonprofit Security Grant Program provides funding for synagogues, schools and Jewish community centers to pay for security measures to […]

New York lawmakers voted to weaken oversight over yeshiva education as part of the state budget deal struck under Gov. Kathy Hochul and approved Thursday evening. The outcome represents a dramatic victory for the state’s Hasidic leaders, who have been fighting for more than a decade against efforts to ensure that Hasidic all-boys schools provide at […]

A federal judge has ordered the immediate release of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University doctoral student who was detained by ICE agents on the street in Somerville, Massachusetts, in March amid a crackdown on pro-Palestinian students on visas. As with Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian protest leader at Columbia University who was freed last month after […]

Donald Trump has appointed a vocal advocate for Jan. 6 Capitol rioters with ties to a Nazi sympathizer to a Justice Department role overseeing extremism and pardons. The announcement came just hours after Trump said he would pull his nomination of Ed Martin to be U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. A key Republican lawmaker, Sen. […]

Three dozen former leaders of prominent American Jewish organizations have signed a letter calling on the groups they once led to “resist the exploitation of Jewish fears.” The letter, which was published as a full-page ad on Thursday in The New York Times, included signatures from past chairs and CEOs of some of the largest […]

A man who self-identified as a “Jew hater” and attacked Jewish pro-Israel protesters at three separate pro-Palestinian rallies has been charged with three counts of committing hate crimes. Tarek Bazrouk, 20, of New York City, had been arrested at three different protests over a period of nine months where he kicked and punched Jewish pro-Israel […]

Police arrested more than 70 pro-Palestinian protesters who crowded and occupied the main library of Columbia University, thrusting the New York City campus back into the center of campus tensions over Gaza. Two Columbia public safety officers were injured in the incident, the school said. The mass arrest, which was authorized by Columbia’s acting president, […]

Rep. Elise Stefanik is perhaps best known for grilling the leaders of three elite universities about campus antisemitism in December 2023, prompting two of them to step down. On Wednesday, she warned the latest set of campus presidents sitting before her that they could meet the same fate. The hearing on Wednesday was the House […]