Articles written by Ben Sales
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White supremacists distributed more propaganda in 2019 but held fewer events, ADL says
(JTA)—One flyer reads “Holocaust = fake news.” Another says “America is not for sale.” And another: “Diversity destroys nations.” These are just a few of the 2,713 pieces of propaganda distributed in the United States by white...
A.G. Barr meets with Jewish leaders
NEW YORK (JTA)—In a meeting Tuesday with Orthodox Jewish leaders in Brooklyn, U.S. Attorney General William Barr pledged to track and prosecute hate crimes more aggressively on the federal level while also blaming the rise of anti-Semitism on what...
Survey: most American adults don't know 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust
(JTA)—Half of American adults are unaware of basic facts regarding Nazism and the Holocaust, including the number of Jews who were killed and how Nazis came to power. Those are some of the findings of a new study by the Pew Research Center released...
NAACP suspends official
NEW YORK (JTA)-A local NAACP official in New Jersey has been suspended from his position for six months after giving a speech castigating Orthodox Jews in Jersey City and the largely Jewish city of...
More than 25,000 march against anti-Semitism in New York City
NEW YORK (JTA)-An estimated 25,000 people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and held a rally on Sunday to protest rising anti-Semitism in and around New York City. The rally comes following a spate o...
Monsey rabbi who survived stabbing attack gives invocation at New York State of the State address
NEW YORK (JTA)-Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg, whose home was the site of a stabbing last month on the holiday of Chanukah, delivered an invocation at Governor Andrew Cuomo's State of the State address....
Netanyahu easily wins Likud primary
(JTA)-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has won his party's leadership primary with 72.5 percent of the vote. Challenger Gideon Saar got 27.5 percent, according to Haaretz. Turnout for the...
Inside the biggest American Shabbat service of the year
CHICAGO (JTA)-Josh Nelson sat onstage in front of 5,000 people, accompanied by eight other musicians and perched next to a ginormous video screen bearing the words to one of Judaism's central...
Everything you need to know about Israeli settlements and the Trump administration's announcement
(JTA)-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced this week that the United States will no longer consider Israeli Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria to be illegal. Here's an explainer about what th...
Ukraine asked Alexander Vindman to be its defense minister, and other takeaways from his impeachment testimony
This is a developing story. (JTA)—Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the Jewish National Security Council staffer whose firsthand account of the July phone call between President Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine is at the center of the...
Jewish man stabbed repeatedly outside New York synagogue
This is a developing story. NEW YORK (JTA)—An Orthodox man was stabbed multiple times on his walk to synagogue for morning prayers. The man was approaching the synagogue Toshnad Heichel Torah Utfila in Spring Valley, New York, when a man got out...
These Manhattan synagogues want to become condominiums
NEW YORK (JTA)-One of the most active times of day at the West Side Jewish Center begins precisely at 1:40 p.m., when 60 or so middle-aged men trudge in, mutter through the afternoon prayer service...
Anti-Semitism is spiking in Brooklyn, and officials don't know why
NEW YORK (JTA)-Days after a series of attacks against Jews across Brooklyn, the Anti-Defamation League announced that it would double funding for a school program combating hate. But city officials...
Student walks out on survivor's speech after accusing Israel of 'ethnic cleansing'
(JTA)—A Palestinian student at Benedictine University called on a Holocaust survivor to condemn the establishment of Israel, and then walked out on his speech after he did not do so. Following a speech last week by Professor Harold Kasimow, who...
Michael Bloomberg for president?
NEW YORK (JTA)-Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire media mogul, appears to be preparing to run for president. Bloomberg, 77, flirted with presidential runs in past...
All of Israel's embassies around the world are on strike
(JTA)—As of Wednesday morning, Israel’s embassies and consulates across the globe are on strike. “No consular services will be provided and no one will be allowed to enter,” one ambassador posted on Twitter. Those services include passport...
Jared Kushner appears to back Israeli unity government
(JTA)—Jared Kushner, the point man on the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan, appeared to endorse a unity government between Israel’s two largest parties. In a rare interview Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and...
At this Florida Jewish day school, half the students aren't Jewish
SARASOTA, Florida (JTA)-Most American Jewish day schools go all in on Chanukah, in part to remind their students that Jews have a winter holiday of their own. But when December rolls around at the...
America's 7.5 million Jews are older, whiter and more liberal than the country as a whole
NEW YORK (JTA)—In the past seven years, the American Jewish population has grown 10 percent. It remains a population that is mostly liberal, college educated and overwhelmingly white. And it’s not getting any younger. This is all according to a...
Anti-Semitic hate crimes in NYC have risen significantly in 2019
NEW YORK (JTA)—The number of hate crimes against Jews in New York City has risen significantly over the first nine months of this year, part of a citywide rise in such offenses. The New York Police Department has reported 311 total hate crimes...
How one Jewish school is processing the arrest of a teacher who preyed on children
NEW YORK (JTA)—Sitting at the front of a large room lined floor to ceiling with Jewish holy books, Rabbi Joseph Beyda’s voice broke as he processed, seemingly in real time, the idea that a trusted teacher had preyed on his students. “I think th...
Here's how New York City's new hate crimes chief plans to tackle rising anti-Semitism
(JTA)-Like other local officials, Deborah Lauter can't say exactly what's causing the recent spike in hate crimes against Jews in New York City. It could be, in her words, "the rhetoric that's coming...
The New York Times exposé
(JTA)—As of this writing, Israel has not bombed Iran’s nuclear program. But according to an exposé in The New York Times that dropped Wednesday, it could still happen. And nearly did. The 10,000-word story details how close Israel came to...
The relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Jewish philanthropist Leslie Wexner, explained
(JTA)-One of the most befuddling questions surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein saga is why Leslie Wexner, a billionaire entrepreneur, entrusted all of his money to Epstein, a secretive financier with no...
Trump condemns bigotry and white supremacy in response to El Paso and Dayton shootings
(JTA)—President Donald Trump said “hate has no place in America” in an address to the nation following the mass shootings over the weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Trump pledged additional resources to the FBI to investigate domesti...
