World News
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Whistleblower claims Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown was a cash grab
A new whistleblower report alleges that the Trump Administration’s investigations into campus antisemitism were merely efforts to extract millions from universities, under the pretense of rooting out hate. The report, written by the Washington, D.C.-based Government Accountability Project on behalf of former Department of Justice Attorney Haley Van Erem, alleges that the administration’s antisemitism task…
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An influential book of a Nazi leader’s confessions is now available in English
(JTA) — Jürgen Stroop, the Nazi commander who led the killing of more than 50,000 Jews, was sitting in a cell in Warsaw awaiting his own execution. Before he met the gallows, Stroop described in unrepentant detail his ascent as a Nazi, his destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and his daily prosecution of mass murder.…
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California Democratic primary pits AIPAC-backed candidate against progressive Israel critic
(JTA) — AIPAC and its allies have poured millions of dollars into a California special election, transforming a race between two Democrats into a battleground over the pro-Israel group’s place in Democratic politics. The spending in the Bay Area’s 14th congressional district is aimed at boosting Melissa Hernandez, a moderate Democrat and president of the…
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Samuel Beckett’s characters may have seemed inert, but he didn’t wait to fight antisemitism
A newly published diary of Samuel Beckett’s extended trip to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s helps to explain why the Nobel Prize-winning Irish author became active in the Resistance movement in Occupied France. Already discussed and cited by Beckett scholars in such studies as Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries 1936–1937, the new book explains how…
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Can an anti-Zionist Democrat win in a heavily Jewish South Florida district?
(JTA) — Democratic primary voters in Florida’s newly drawn 25th Congressional District are choosing on Tuesday between an anti-Zionist member of the Democratic Socialists of America and one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress. The race offers a test of whether the Democratic Party’s progressive insurgency can extend to a district that includes Delray Beach,…
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Florida’s primaries have many pain points for Jews. Here are 5 races to watch
(JTA) — As an exhausting primary season begins to wind down, voters in Florida, the last remaining big state yet to hold its primaries, head to the polls Tuesday with several races on the Jewish community’s radar. The conservative state is home to large numbers of Jews, including a growing number of Jewish emigres from…
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Vandals attack prominent Reform synagogue in Jerusalem
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Vandals broke into a Reform synagogue in Jerusalem over the weekend, damaging the building and artwork and tearing down Pride flags displayed by the congregation. Shortly after midnight a group of youths entered the grounds of Kol HaNeshamah in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood, smashed a window and made their way into the…
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The Central Synagogue attack had no clear connection to Mamdani. He’s still being blamed.
A stabbing outside a synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Dozens of swastikas painted on a Brooklyn playground. A Queens synagogue desecrated with feces and motor oil. Combined with an unprecedented call by New York’s mayor to protest Israel’s prime minister, the recent rash of crimes against Jews in New York City has the community…
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‘We are in a time of biblical proportions’: What survivors of past shul attacks want Central Synagogue to know
When Audrey Glickman heard about the Friday night attack at Central Synagogue, a prominent congregation on Manhattan’s East Side, she had a visceral, immediate reaction. “My first thought with anything like this is: they’ve been invaded,” she said. “And I know how that feels.” Glickman, 69, survived the October 2018 attack on Pittsburgh’s Tree of…
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On my first Shabbat in NYC, the sanctuary was attacked
I don’t often go to synagogue. Outside of the High Holidays, it is not somewhere I would ordinarily find myself on a Friday night. In the last few years, I have made a point of spending Shabbat with my grandmother. We light candles, eat together and let the week recede for a few hours. I…
