(ANALYSIS) Maybe what stands out here is that no matter how much the country has changed socially, religiously and politically, none of that has really shifted the overall relationship between Jews and the Democratic Party.
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As the evening crowd arrived for services Thursday evening at Young Israel of Century City, Benny Factor watched for updates on his phone, which was leaned against a tissue box on the table in front of him. The chyron of an Israeli TV channel he was streaming told the story: “Happening now,” it said in Hebrew: “A wave of attacks has begun in Iran.”
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(ANALYSIS) On June 5, the U.S. Department of State sanctioned four individuals currently serving as judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “directly engaging in any effort by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute a protected person without consent of that person’s country of nationality.”
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Many Jews are outraged that while the war in Gaza has been raging since Oct. 7, 2023 and they have suffered many casualties and interruptions to their civilian life in response to repeated reserve duty call-ups, their able-bodied ultra-Orthodox fellow citizens have not shared the defense burden. The IDF faces shortages, needing approximately 12,000 new recruits, including 7,000 combat soldiers.
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What motivated the smashing on April 23 of the main gate to Damascus’s historic Jewish cemetery and the digging of a pit disturbing the tomb of renowned mystic Rabbi Hayyim ben Joesph Vital? The desecration can be understood as part of the history of Jewish and Muslim leaders battling on the metaphysical astral plain in parallel to the normative Israeli-Arab military conflict.
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(ANALYSIS) In May 2025, the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) reported that since the aid blockade began on March 2, 2025, 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition. WHO further warned that if the situation persists, nearly 71,000 children under the age of 5 are expected to be acutely malnourished over the next 11 months.
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The man who allegedly walked up to two Israeli embassy staffers and shot them dead Wednesday night reportedly told eyewitnesses he “did it for Gaza.” The event those staffers had just left at the Capital Jewish Museum highlighted an organization that supplied aid to Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war. And his victims had made peace-building central to their work.
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Two Israeli embassy staffers were shot and killed outside an event in Washington, D.C., around 9 p.m. Wednesday, according to local and federal officials, by a suspect who appeared to target them in what many Jewish leaders are calling an antisemitic attack. The shooting took place following an American Jewish Committee event for young Jewish professionals and diplomats at the Capital Jewish Museum.
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About half of American Jews describe President Donald Trump as antisemitic, while only a minority think his campus crackdown is reducing antisemitism, according to a new survey. American Jews are also broadly critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and fewer of them say they feel an attachment to Israel than before the current Israel-Hamas war.
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A newscast from Israel streamed on a large screen, and a woman speaking into a microphone translated updates into English: “Hamas announces it has released Edan Alexander.” “The Red Cross says it’s on the scene but does not yet have Alexander.” “We have confirmation that Alexander has been released.” “Alexander is officially in the hands of the IDF.” “Alexander has had a first conversation with his mother and is telling jokes.”
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Three men from different faiths sit side by side on a stage. It’s nearly sundown just outside Berlin, with more than 100 people gathered for an interfaith iftar — the fast-breaking evening meal of Muslims during Ramadan. Each religious leader speaks about the power of fasting in their tradition, their words framed by the clatter of Turkish food being prepared in the kitchen.
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Why was Segev Schwartz the only casualty in his battalion of 30 Israeli soldiers when a terrorist tossed a hand grenade in a cafeteria on Oct. 7, 2023? That was his mother Sara’s question. The answer she found completed a picture of Segev she and her husband shared on the eve of Israel Memorial Day, the commemoration of the fallen in Israeli wars and acts of terrorism since 1948.
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President Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is one of the GOP’s most prominent “Christian Zionists” — a phrase often associated with conservative evangelicals’ support for Israel. But Christian Zionism is much older than the 1980s alliance between the Republican Party and the religious right.
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(OPINION) Every year at Passover, when Jews around the world recite the Four Questions, we begin by asking, “ma nishtana halaila hazeh me kol halaylot” — “what makes this night different from all others?” As we approach this year’s seders, I think that it’s also appropriate that we ask what makes this year different from all others.
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When the Portland Trail Blazers gave up four draft picks for Deni Avdija last summer, it seemed like an overpay. Avdija, the league’s only Israeli-born player, was coming off a breakout fourth season for the Washington Wizards. But his stats had popped so much that some regression felt almost inevitable. Instead, as the focal point of a young, head-turning team, Avdija’s gotten even better.
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(OPINION) The international conversation about Gaza has long circled the same grim question: What would it take for the population to rise up against Hamas? We just might have the beginnings of a response: The resumption of war, after Israel broke a two-month ceasefire following 15 months of devastating conflict. The prospect of more death with no end date, all because Hamas refuses to free more hostages until Israel agrees to leave it in power as part of a more permanent truce, appears to be too much to bear.
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Findings for each study were drawn from surveys of more than 2,000 Christians respectively in the U.K. and the U.S., using statistical modeling to analyze data across all ages, ethnicities, genders, income levels and educational backgrounds, and including marital status.
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has long warned about antisemitism on the right — from neo-Nazis in Charlottesville to white nationalist conspiracy theories on the campaign trail. But in his new book, set to go on sale Tuesday, he argues that the antisemitism coming from the left can be just as insidious — and, in some ways, harder to fight.
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The 97th Academy Awards was a banner night for Jews. Adrien Brody and Mikey Madison won the Oscars for best actor and best actress, the first time in decades that Jewish actors have swept that category; best supporting actor went to the co-star of a film about Jewish cousins who tour Majdanek; and “The Brutalist,” a film about a Holocaust survivor’s experience of antisemitism in America, won for cinematography and score.
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(ANALYSIS) James Mangold’s film “A Complete Unknown,” nominated for eight Oscars, captures the elusive, enigmatic quality of Bob Dylan in the early 1960s: The years he emerged as a major musical and cultural phenomenon. A scant few years after he came to New York from Minnesota, and legally changed his name from Robert Allen Zimmerman, Dylan transformed American music. Especially “unknown” and baffling is Dylan’s religious and spiritual identity.
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