Protests at Columbia University have attracted national headlines, prompted congressional hearings and led to the arrest of more than 100 students. This week, the New England Patriots owner, Robert K. Kraft, one of the school’s most famous and wealthiest graduates, stepped into the fray. Mr. Kraft, who graduated from Columbia in 1963 and has donated […]
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Why was this Seder different from all other Seders? Start with the setup: a glittering table set for 100, running the length of a drafty warehouse in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. And it was not just any old warehouse; this is where Joyva, the stalwart kosher candy company, stores its stacks of halvah, a […]
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Bonnie Rosenfeld had 38 people crowded into her home in Rockaway, N.J., on Monday night. She has hosted Passover Seders for years, but none that felt quite like this. She wanted to address “the elephant in the room” up front. So as they lit candles to mark the start of the holiday, they also recited […]
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Netanel Crispe, from Danby, Vt., is a 21-year-old junior studying American history at Yale. He is also, to his knowledge, the university’s only Hasidic undergraduate. When he chose Yale, he told me this week, he was “looking for an institution that asserted its position in terms of maintaining and protecting free expression while not backing […]
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When the far-left politicians Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley were first elected to Congress roughly half a decade ago, many moderate Democrats saw their unapologetically progressive vision for America as an albatross around the neck of the Democratic Party. That certainly seemed to be the view of Democratic leaders, who seemed intent on making “the […]
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On the first night of Passover, the singsong of the Four Questions echoed from Jewish homes and gatherings around the world, including from unlikely, contested spaces: the center of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia and other universities where demonstrations are taking place. As evening fell over Columbia’s tent encampment on Monday, about 100 students and faculty […]
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Columbia University is grappling with the fallout from its president’s promise to Congress that she would crack down on unsanctioned protests, and her decision to ask the police to clear an encampment on campus. Demonstrations just outside Columbia’s gates, which are currently closed to the public, took an especially dark tone over the weekend, when […]
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Columbia University announced early Monday that it would hold classes remotely after a wave of agitated protests on campus over the weekend that drew widespread attention from city and national officials and raised safety concerns for some Jewish students. The university’s president, Minouche Shafik, said in a letter to the Columbia community, “We need a […]
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Many Israelis were in a somber mood on Monday as they prepared to usher in Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, saying they would mark the holiday rather than celebrate it, with more than 130 hostages remaining in Gaza. The number of hostages believed to be alive is unclear, and with negotiations with Hamas captors […]
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Days after Columbia University’s president testified before Congress, the atmosphere on campus remained fraught on Sunday, shaken by pro-Palestinian protests that have drawn the attention of the police and the concern of some Jewish students. Over the weekend, the student-led demonstrations on campus also attracted separate, more agitated protests by demonstrators who seemed to be […]
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What do we do with our pain? What, if anything, can we learn from it? The Bible offers a startling and potentially transformative response: Let your memory teach you empathy and your suffering teach you love. This week, Jews around the world will mark the beginning of Passover. We’ll gather for Seders, in which we’ll […]
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Something wasn’t quite right about the chicken soup. The team at Manischewitz had gathered in the test kitchen at the company’s headquarters in Bayonne, N.J., last year to taste the latest version of one of their new offerings. But it wasn’t hitting the notes they were aiming for. “We were tasting it against our grandparents’ […]
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Religious texts state that when Moses climbed to the top of Mount Sinai, he was spoken to by God and inscribed that message onto stone tablets that became known as the Ten Commandments. Thunder rumbled, trumpets blared and lightning shot across the sky. It was, by biblical and other standards, an extraordinary moment. Moses had […]
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In the 1970s, leaders at the Japanese American Citizens League, one of the oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organizations, felt the prospect of reparations for their wartime incarceration was out of reach. Many Americans knew little about how the government had imprisoned more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of whom were […]
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April 11, 2024, 3:08 p.m. ET April 11, 2024, 3:08 p.m. ET A Palestinian girl receives treatment for malnutrition at Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza.Credit…Mohammed Salem/Reuters Soon after the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, the Israeli defense minister vowed to impose a “complete siege” on Gaza: “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” would […]
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Four months after an explosive congressional hearing on antisemitism precipitated the resignations of two Ivy League presidents, another university president is about to step to the hot seat. On Wednesday, Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, will testify about antisemitism before the same House committee that grilled the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and the […]
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Unfortunately, Benjamin Netanyahu is right — “unfortunately,” I say, because he is the most incompetent, corrupt and divisive Israeli prime minister ever, as many in Israel believe. But he is right that it’s crucial for Israel to conquer Rafah and destroy the Hamas battalions ensconced in that city at the southern end of the Gaza […]
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Over the last five years, the Jewish political advocacy group J Street reached new heights of influence. The center-left lobby, whose slogan upon its founding in 2008 was “pro-Israel, pro-peace,” saw five Democratic presidential candidates stump at its 2019 convention. It helped persuade 48 congressional Democrats to back a 2021 bill that would have pressured […]
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Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York was booed on Sunday at a demonstration in Manhattan calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas after he encouraged attendees to also push for humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza. “As we remember the heinous crimes committed by Hamas, we must continue to press for lifesaving humanitarian […]
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The gay activist David Mixner and Senator Joe Lieberman died last month at the ages of 77 and 82, respectively, and were it not for the coincident timing of their passing, I would have no reason to reflect collectively upon their legacies. Biographically, ideologically and temperamentally, they were very different men, and to my knowledge, […]
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Students from Colby College helped harvest ice from a pond for a new mikvah, or ritual bath, at a synagogue in Waterville. WHY WE’RE HERE We’re exploring how America defines itself one place at a time. When a synagogue in Maine needed water for a ceremonial Jewish bath, it drew on a fitting natural source, […]
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More than 150 Jewish actors, filmmakers and other artists signed an open letter that was published on Friday in defense of remarks about Jewishness and the war in Gaza that the director Jonathan Glazer made in his Oscars acceptance speech for “The Zone of Interest,” his film about the Holocaust. Glazer’s speech has become one […]
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