Pondering the state of American Jewry
The hotly contested Pennsylvania senate seat has gone to stroke victim John Fetterman, showing just how blue this state has gone. Fetterman shows obvious signs of cognitive deficits. It is difficult for him to speak. And then there was the whole question about fracking: was he for or against. (He was against it, now he’s …
Gas prices have been soaring in the United States even while President Biden’s approval ratings continue to plummet. But in Israel, the price of gas is going down. Interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced that gas prices will be lowered in August after several successive increases. Lapid says lower gas prices are part of an …
Kosher consumers are confronting a chicken shortage, just in time for Pesach. So dire is the shortage that Facebook groups have sprung up to alert followers when a store restocks its shelves. In the stores themselves, customers police other shoppers’ carts, if it looks like someone is guilty of stockpiling, leaving that much fewer chicken …
Americans can’t help but be touched by the plight of the underdog Ukraine, a sovereign nation under attack by Russia. We watch, seemingly helpless as Ukrainians, either stay and fight and die, or flee their native land in droves. But aside from our empathy for a small nation under attack by a big Soviet-style bear, …
A New York Times account of a Baghdad conference on peace between Israel and Iraq was filled with inaccuracies, to the point of offending Jewish history. The article describes the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 that led to a schism between Iraq and Iraqi Jews. The most infamous pogrom in Iraq targeting the Jewish …
A survey by Alums for Campus Fairness, found that 27 percent of Jewish students reported having been the target of in-person offensive or threatening antisemitic comments from a faculty member or school employee. Another 30 percent said they knew someone who had experienced such comments. Three horrifying examples from a long list provided by popular …
A bullet was fired into the window of Brooklyn synagogue Khal Zichron Mordechai on Shabbos afternoon (June 26, 2021). It was just before 3 PM, too late for Shacharis, and too early for Mincha, so thank God, no one was hurt. But it was scary to see the bullet hole in the window, and not …
Even though Israel has had remarkable success with its vaccination program against COVID-19, the State Department placed Israel—along with the UK—at level 4 on its no-fly list due to its claim that Israel has a “very high level” of COVID-19 infections. This, despite the fact that Israel has closed all but one of its coronavirus …
A Columbus, Ohio man has been charged with a hate crime in a federal district court after harassing his Jewish neighbors. The 65-year-old man, Douglas G. Schifer, came before US District Magistrate Judge Elizabeth A. Preston Deavers on a misdemeanor count of criminal interference with right to fair housing, carrying a potential sentence of up …
Facebook removed over 78,000 profiles on Facebook and Instagram, claiming they had shared QAnon content and other “militarized social movement” content, from August 2020 and onward. A Facebook update issued January 19 said as follows: “We continue to strengthen our enforcement by identifying additional militarized social movements, new terms associated with QAnon and how people …