Helen Chernikoff is the Forward’s News Editor. She came to the Forward from The Jewish Week, where she served as the first web director and created both a blog dedicated to disability issues and a food and wine website. Before that, she covered the housing, lodging and logistics industries for Reuters, where she could sit at her desk and watch her stories move the stock market. Helen has a Master’s of Public Administration from Columbia University and a BA in History and French from Amherst College. She is also a rabbinical school dropout. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @thesimplechild.
Helen Chernikoff
By Helen Chernikoff
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News Roberta Kaplan: Who is the Jewish lawyer leading post-White House lawsuits against Trump?
With Georgia’s current ballot count and the ongoing ballot count in Pennsylvania and other states making it increasingly likely that President Donald Trump will not win a second term, one consequence for him, personally, is that he would lose the broad legal immunity he has had while in the White House. Whenever he leaves office,…
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Fast Forward The latest on Jewish races: Elissa Slotkin wins in Michigan
In North Carolina, a Jewish leader and political neophyte won a seat in Congress. In New York, a sitting congressman who’d barely won in 2018 lost this round. Other races are still too close to call, but as the day goes on, more questions are getting answered. Here’s an update on the big Jewish races…
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Fast Forward Laura Loomer, friend of Proud Boys founder, loses to Lois Frankel in Florida
Veteran incumbent Lois Frankel smashed far-right Jewish activist Laura Loomer’s bid for her Congressional seat in Florida’s 21st district. Lois Frankel, 72, is a Democrat who has served in Congress for eight years after having also served as a two-term mayor of West Palm Beach, after 14 years in the Florida state legislature. Earlier in…
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News Handbook used by universities to report campus antisemitism replaced by 13-page memo
The U.S. Department of Education is rescinding a 265-page handbook colleges and universities used to report campus antisemitism and other hate crimes, replacing it with a 13-page document. The handbook devotes almost three pages to its “basic” definition of hate crime; the new memo doesn’t explicitly define it at all, but refers the reader to…
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Life ‘Power of prayer:’ Rabbis reflect on Amy Coney Barrett’s statement of faith
“I believe in the power of prayer,” Judge Amy Coney Barrett said during her Senate confirmation hearings this week, “and it has been uplifting to hear that so many people are praying for me.” Barrett is a passionate Catholic whose faith has been the subject of much debate since President Trump nominated her to replace…
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News Trump flags suddenly sprouted in Borough Park. Why now?
A local rabble rouser had a request for President Donald Trump, which he tapped out and sent into the universe through Twitter on Wednesday. “We are asking for President Trump to interfere with Gov Cuomo’s hateful decision of tough lockdown on our schools and places of worship,” tweeted city council candidate Heshy Tischler. “#Cuomohatesjews.” In…
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Fast Forward Orthodox journalist attacked, chased, called ‘Nazi’ at Jewish Borough Park protest
An ultra-Orthodox journalist who covers the religious Jewish community was set upon by participants in a protest against new coronavirus restrictions after the event’s leader ordered the crowd to chase him away. Jacob Kornbluh, who lives in Borough Park, Brooklyn, was covering an event organized by Heshy Tischler, an aspiring politician. Tishcler has recently risen…
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News In Borough Park, an anti-shutdown protest turns into a pro-Trump rally — and a journalist is assaulted
The religious Jews of Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood often pour into the streets during the harvest holiday of Sukkot to dance with Torahs in a celebration called “Simchat Beit HaShoeva,” a ritual having to do with rainfall. On Wednesday night, they danced along Borough Parks’s 13th Avenue holding Trump flags. Heshy Tischler, a community agitator…
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