World News
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NYC’s Eric Adams, at mayors’ meeting in Greece, says antisemitism has become normalized
(New York Jewish Week) — Likening the growing threat of antisemitism to a frog that’s slowly boiled alive, New York City Mayor Eric Adams spoke about the dangers of hate during his speech at the Mayor’s Summit Against Antisemitism in Athens, Greece. The two-day summit, which began Wednesday, is a gathering of more than 50…
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Yeshiva education reform activist launching independent haredi news organization
(JTA) — Naftuli Moster, the founder and former executive director of Yaffed, the advocacy group focused on improving secular education in haredi Orthodox Jewish schools, is launching a news organization focused on what he sees as a news desert in the haredi world. With a board that includes seasoned Jewish journalists, Shtetl: Haredi Free Press…
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Loan company SoFi pulls ad after criticism that it features an antisemitic stereotype
(JTA) — Rhonda Moore was alarmed when she saw the ad for a student-loan refinancing company that featured what she believed was a stereotypical dishonest Jewish banker. In the ad, for the company SoFi, a young couple is harassed by a schlubby, balding middle-aged man who dumps out the contents of the woman’s purse searching…
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NY City Council speaker skips Israel trip, but says she is ‘proud’ of colleagues taking part
(New York Jewish Week) — The speaker of New York’s City Council said she supports her colleagues’ participation in an educational trip to Israel this week, one day after a Jewish news site asked why she was not taking part. “I am proud that the Council’s Jewish Caucus has led a diverse delegation of members…
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Netanyahu on Trump’s dinner with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes: ‘He shouldn’t do that’
(JTA) — Benjamin Netanyahu, the incoming Israeli prime minister who has said that Donald Trump was Israel’s best-ever friend in the White House, said the former president’s dinner a week ago with two antisemites was a “mistake.” ‘I think that that’s what I would say about President Trump’s decision to dine with this person I…
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A German town built a granary atop its Jewish cemetery. Now the bones are yielding insights about Ashkenazi DNA.
BERLIN (JTA) – The city of Erfurt in central Germany is home to an impeccably restored medieval synagogue made possible because local Jews had been expelled long before the Nazis began their campaign to destroy Jewish sites. Now, Erfurt’s long-hidden Jewish past is again offering new insights — this time about the genetic history of…
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From McConnell to McCarthy, Republican leaders criticize Trump’s dinner with Holocaust denier
(JTA) — A week after former President Donald Trump dined with two men who are known for their outspoken antisemitism, Republican leaders are beginning to speak out — though some are sparing Trump direct criticism. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader in the Senate, said Trump’s Nov. 20 dinner with Kanye West, the rapper…
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Comedian Freddie Roman, who brought the Borscht Belt to Broadway, dies at 85
(New York Jewish Week) — Freddie Roman wasn’t just a Catskills comic but a curator and preservationist of a comedy tradition born at the Jewish resorts in upstate New York’s Catskill Mountains. For years he served as dean of the Friars Club, the New York city clubhouse of popular entertainment, where faded stars and up-and-comers gathered…
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Meet the bartender behind New York’s new Hanukkah-themed cocktail bar
(New York Jewish Week) — During the so-called “winter holiday season,” Christmas cheer takes center stage, while Hanukkah gets relegated to hobbled-together end caps at grocery stores (if that). This is something that’s long irked Naomi Levy, a 36-year-old Jewish bartender who lives in Boston. There, as in New York, Christmas-themed pop-up bars appear all…
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Deeply Jewish comedy is having a moment, even as antisemitism rocks pop culture
(JTA) — Two weeks after a Trump-supporting heckler threw a beer can at Ariel Elias at a club in New Jersey over her politics, the Jewish comedian’s fortunes took a turn for the better. A video of the incident went viral and she made her network television debut on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show. She…
