Sam Kestenbaum is a contributing editor and former staff writer for the Forward. Before this, he worked for The New York Times and newsrooms in Sana, Ramallah and Beijing. Contact him at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum and on Instagram at @skestenbaum.
Buzzfeed journalist Joseph Bernstein, whose father was a celebrated United States Justice Department Nazi hunter, is being trolled online for articles he has been writing about the white nationalist movement known as the alt-right. After a recent article about Sam Hyde, a comedian with ties to the alt-right and a show on Comedy Central’s Adult…
The New York City Council is moving to consider a resolution condemning boycotts of Israel next week. The council’s Committee on Contracts is scheduled to consider a resolution next Thursday, Politico reported, that would condemn “all efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel and the global movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction the people…
A Jewish rapper with ties the 1990s hip-hop supergroup the Wu-Tang Clan is ensnared in a grinding, months-long Twitter beef with a popular MC and activist from Brooklyn. Ross Filler, whose stage name is Remedy, has been trading jabs on Twitter with Talib Kweli a well-known rapper with roots in New York’s Afrocentric hip-hop collective…
Updated December 11, 2019 Their story rarely finds its way into the mainstream news. When it does, readers are surprised. A cousin of First Lady Michelle Obama is a black rabbi in Chicago? Generations of African Americans — not religious converts — who observe the Sabbath and read the Torah? A star NBA player decides…
On a recent Saturday in Brooklyn, hundreds of Hebrew Israelites assembled to hear their leader speak. Rabbi Capers C. Funnye was to be formally inaugurated as chief rabbi — and to lay out his historic vision for the movement. At Bnai Adath Kol Beth Yisrael, pews were filled to capacity, upstairs and down. Electric fans…
Israel had made plans to sit down at an historic meeting with 15 West African countries this year — but the Nigerian president is not signing off on the deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamim Netanyahu had previously made plans to attend a summit with the Economic Communtiy of West African States, or ECOWAS, this year….
The headlines are shocking. Muslim women “Demand Criminalization of Fat White Men in Speedos.” The Islamic State announces “Activities for Kids in Heaven.” “Palestine to Legalize Weed, Become the ‘Occupied Holland of the Mideast.’” And following each headline is a short story — delivered in cool newsroom deadpan. Introducing Israel’s answer to the Onion, the…
At day camps for young Satmar Hasidim, children hold mock protests — against the State of Israel. In video clips, captured this summer on cellphones and published by the religious website Yeshiva World News, campers are seen chanting “Israeli government, shame on you!” In another clip, children are seen pelting a car with eggs, made…
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