World News
-
The one Jewish value everyone should hold dear in the age of AI
As friends, relatives and even colleagues dive headlong into our AI future, I’ve been stuck nervously on the platform’s edge. I’m not a skeptic of technology by nature, but by experience. I’ve watched too many shiny new toys come along, promising to make society smarter or better connected, only to become superspreaders of confusion, alienation…
-
UpScrolled is a social media haven for unspeakable antisemitism. How does that help Palestinians?
When Issam Hijazi launched the social media app UpScrolled last June, he positioned it as the antidote to Big Tech censorship — a haven where pro-Palestinian voices could finally speak freely. The platform really took off in January, expanding to some 2.5 million users. It looked like the Promised Land for internet denizens concerned that…
-
Mamdani’s antisemitism chief pledges trust-building amid early skepticism
Phylisa Wisdom, the progressive Jewish leader chosen to head New York City’s Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, says she is preparing to take a broad view of her mandate as she steps into the role under intense scrutiny. In an exclusive interview with the Forward, her first since Mayor Zohran Mamdani named her last week,…
-
Israel’s bobsled team is chasing more than medals in its first Olympic outing in Milan
(JTA) — No matter what happens when Israel’s bobsled team hits the ice next week at the 2026 Winter Olympics, team captain Adam “AJ” Edelman has already had a year for the history books. The 34-year-old Brookline, Massachusetts, native is the first Orthodox Jewish athlete to compete at the Winter Olympics, and now the first…
-
Debate over the Blue Square Super Bowl ad is fading. The racist responses from my fellow Jews will be felt longer.
(JTA) — Days after the Super Bowl, I am still reeling from how a moment designed to confront antisemitism — a 30-second ad from Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance — shined a light on the hate within some corners of our own community. The ad spurred debate over its effectiveness — a worthy conversation. But what…
-
French, German, Jewish leaders call for resignation of UN’s Francesca Albanese over ‘common enemy’ comments
(JTA) — A slew of prominent voices, including the French foreign minister, have called for the resignation of United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese over her latest comments about Israel. Albanese, the U.N.’s Palestinian rights envoy, is a vocal critic of Israel who has drawn sustained rebuke from multiple U.S. administrations over comments seen as…
-
Is there life after Lubavitch?
Schneur Zalman Newfield knows as well as anyone what it takes to leave Orthodoxy. In his new memoir, Brooklyn Odyssey, he likens his transformation from Hasidic to secular to a butterfly’s metamorphosis. “At one stage it is clearly a caterpillar; at another it is a butterfly. But when exactly did it shift from one organism…
-
Homeland Security hires social media manager whose posts raised alarm for promoting ‘white-nationalist rhetoric’
(JTA) — The Department of Homeland Security has hired a new digital communications director whose social media content for the Labor Department reportedly raised alarm bells inside the department and beyond for promoting white supremacist rhetoric. Peyton Rollins began his new role at Homeland Security this month, The New York Times was the first to…
-
The Israeli government wants you to stop calling Oct. 7 a ‘massacre.’ Yes, really.
The Oct. 7 attack was a massacre. But Israeli authorities would prefer you not call it that. The Prime Minister’s Office demanded that a bill establishing a national memorial for the incursion remove the term “massacre” from its title, with Minister Mickey Zohar explaining that since Israel is “strong,” no one can “massacre the people…
-
ADL retracts Tumbler Ridge shooting antisemitism claim
The ADL published and then retracted a claim that the alleged mass shooter at a school in Canada maintained a social media account with antisemitic posts, a day after it posted the erroneous information on its website. The organization wrote Thursday at the bottom of an updated page about alleged Tumbler Ridge Secondary School shooter…
