World News
-
US and Iran agree to ‘fragile’ 2-week ceasefire; Israel says deal does not extend to Lebanon
(JTA) — Israel struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on Wednesday as a tenuous ceasefire took hold in its monthlong war with Iran, which it has conducted jointly with the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump and the prime minister of Pakistan, which brokered the truce talks, announced the two-week halt in hostilities late Tuesday, as…
-
An 82-year-old Jewish recording legend on his film directing debut: ‘I could have been good at this’
Kenny Vance (born Kenneth Rosenberg), 82, was not quite ready to use my word “omen,” but he acknowledged that in some oblique way the destruction of his home in the Rockaways, compliments of superstorm Sandy, played a role in shaping his award-winning documentary, Heart & Soul: a Love Story. The evocative and elegiac film pays…
-
National support group for interfaith Jewish families guts staff amid funding crisis
(JTA) — A national nonprofit that supports interfaith Jewish families has slashed its workforce after facing an unanticipated budget shortfall. 18Doors announced on March 31 that it had “significantly” reduced its staff due to budget constraints. In fact, about two-thirds of the staff were laid off the week before the announcement, board member Laurie Beijen…
-
Jewish groups condemn Trump’s threat that a ‘whole civilization will die’ in Iran
(JTA) — Jewish groups were among those criticizing President Donald Trump and accusing him of using genocidal rhetoric on Tuesday after Trump posted online that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” wrote Trump in…
-
Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews
President Donald Trump has backed himself into a corner on Iran. His increasingly apocalyptic threats — including a Tuesday morning social media post that warned “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not accede to his terms — make that much clear. Trump is looking for any way out of this war that…
-
Ben Lerner’s tale of three hotels is a lyrical novel of loss and human potential
Transcription By Ben Lerner Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $25, 144 pages As we scroll through the final portion of human history before it gets permanently revised by AI, Ben Lerner has written a lyrical novel of loss. This three-part novel from the author of Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04, and the Pulitzer finalist The Topeka…
-
The Forward publishes exclusive interview with Columbia protest leader Mahmoud Khalil
New York — April 7, 2026 — Today, the Forward, the nation’s leading Jewish news organization, published an exclusive, in-depth interview with Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University protest leader whose arrest during last year’s campus demonstrations thrust him into the national spotlight. In a candid and wide-ranging conversation with Arno Rosenfeld, an enterprise reporter and…
-
London music festival canceled after UK bars Kanye West’s entry amid pressure from Jewish groups
(JTA) — London’s Wireless Festival has been canceled after the British government denied entry to Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, following mounting pressure from Jewish groups over his history of antisemitic remarks. The organizers of the popular three-day festival confirmed its cancellation in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, writing that…
-
In her inspired and inspiring history of the Jewish Bund, Molly Crabapple has found her anti-Zionist heroes for our time
Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Labor Bund By Molly Crabapple One World, 453 pages, $32 The week of Passover, north Brooklyn bus riders found something unusual at several bus shelters. Swapped out for paid ads were quotes including one translated from a 1938 essay in Tsukunft, a Yiddish…
-
Long Island town ordered to pay $19M after blocking Chabad synagogue construction
(JTA) — After nearly two decades of legal sparring, a town on Long Island has been ordered to pay a local Chabad center $19 million, settling claims that officials unlawfully blocked the construction of a synagogue on its rabbi’s property. Rabbi Aaron Konikov and Lubavitch of Old Westbury sued the Village of Old Westbury in…
