World News
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Trump announces he has ‘largely negotiated’ Iran deal, Strait of Hormuz opening
(JTA) — President Donald Trump announced in a post on Truth Social Saturday afternoon that a deal with Iran had been “largely negotiated,” despite saying earlier in the day that he was undecided on whether to agree to a proposal or resume strikes. Trump described the deal as a “Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to PEACE”…
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In Trump’s assault on democracy, echoes of Nazi Germany but new glimmers of hope that America will be different
In the final, tumultuous years of the Weimar Republic, a succession of arch-conservative chancellors ruled by emergency decree rather than go through the Reichstag, the German parliament. Germany had become a democracy in name only, as reactionary power brokers steered the nation deeper into totalitarian waters, ultimately opening the door for Hitler. As we approach…
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This Jewish artist hadn’t painted in more than 5 decades. Then came Oct. 7.
Sid Klein has finally found his subject. More than half a century after he scrambled to pick a topic for his senior art project at Brooklyn College—and settled on exploring the porcelain curves of a toilet bowl in a 20-painting series—he’s discovered a purpose. Klein, 78, took a five-decade hiatus from art between college graduation…
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How can I explain to my 93-year-old mother why it suddenly seems ok to hate Jews?
My mom — 93 years old, still sharp, a lifelong Democrat, a woman who has read The New York Times nearly every day for the last five decades — called me this week, in something approaching shock, to tell me she had read Nicholas Kristof’s latest op-ed. “I can’t believe what they’re saying,” she said…
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The bizarre antisemitic book that taught me to better understand Judaism
The pub bookshelf in Painswick, England, was stocked with books bound in handsome jewel tones. It seemed charming and innocuous, until I spotted a 1934 hardback with the alarmingly simple title of Twelve Jews. Curious, I opened it. “The quarrel between the Jews and the rest of civilisation has been kept alive by two forces:…
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For Bob Dylan’s 85th birthday, an 85-minute playlist
Nobel Prize-winning song-poet Bob Dylan turns 85 on Sunday, May 24. In order to celebrate the august occasion, we have put together an 85-minute playlist featuring one minute of music for every year Dylan has been alive. This playlist isn’t meant to summarize or stand in for Dylan’s overall body of work, which numbers well…
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Don’t dismiss Israel’s most rage-baiting minister as fringe
As Israel drifts toward another election campaign, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir this week offered voters — and the world — a grotesque glimpse of where a large branch of Israeli politics is heading. Touring a detention facility holding activists from a Gaza-bound flotilla intercepted by Israel, Ben-Gvir waved a large Israeli flag before rows…
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Gaza and Israel go unmentioned in Democrats’ 2024 election autopsy report
(JTA) — Gaza and Israel go unmentioned in the Democrats’ 190-page autopsy of Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential election loss that the Democratic National Committee released to CNN on Thursday. Critics of the Biden administration’s support for Israel during the war in Gaza that began on Oct. 7, 2023, have alleged that the party was suppressing…
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Argentine official who investigated death of AMIA prosecutor charged with covering up evidence
(JTA) — The former prosecutor who led the investigation into a mysterious 2015 death that unnerved Argentina’s Jewish community has been charged with concealing evidence in the case. Viviana Fein was indicted on May 12 on charges of “aggravated concealment” over her handling of the investigation into the death of Alberto Nisman, a special prosecutor…
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The Black Jewish experience, and Black-Jewish relations, take center stage on Fifth Avenue
The civil rights movement represented a kind of pax romana in Black–Jewish relations — symbolized most enduringly by the image of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching beside Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery. While many Jewish and Black Americans recall that era with a sense of wistful nostalgia, the relationship has become increasingly…
