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.
African-American churches are split over Black Lives Matter’s stand on Israel, with younger clergymen rallying to the activists’ defense after a group of more conservative pastors rejected Black Lives Matter’s harsh criticism of the Jewish state. The schism, which reflects broader divisions between emerging activists and more conservative leaders, was brought into sharper relief when…
Hacker celebrity Jacob Appelbaum stepped down from his position at the nonprofit digital privacy group Tor Project following accusations of rape and other sexual misconduct. This comes after a two-month internal investigation by Tor Project into the accusations, concluded in July, which determined that the accusations were true. No legal charges have yet been brought…
The family of the Australian yeshiva student killed in the Crown Heights riots condemned as “shameful” a street festival jointly planned by black and Jewish leaders to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the racial unrest that tore through the Brooklyn neighborhood. “The decision to hold a ‘Community Festival’ to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the…
Kendrick Farris, United States’ only male weightlifter at the 2016 Olympics, finished 11th in his weight class. Farris was not too disappointed, though. He saw Rio as a global platform to spread his spiritual beliefs, whether he won a medal or not. “I try to share my faith as much as possible, using this platform…
Jewish responses spanned the political spectrum following scathing criticism of Israel by a group affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement. But strikingly, even statements by some centrist groups strove to strike a balance — reflecting their apparent recognition of the broader movement’s impact as an emerging force in American life. The wide range of…
An institutional dispute among two storied American Jewish groups — the Anti-Defamation League and the Zionist Organization of America — has come to a head in public. “We’re a civil rights organization. The ZOA is not,” ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt said in an August 5 interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “They’ve been doing this…
As American Jews (and their media) are fawning over Olympian gymnast Aly Raisman, fewer know about her teammate Gabrielle Douglas’ complex religious background — a mixture of Christianity and Judaism. “I used to be Jewish,” she wrote in her 2012 memoir. “Well not exactly Jewish — but my family practiced some of the Jewish traditions.”…
Amid the nearly 40,000 words that make up the recent manifesto issued by a large coalition affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, two have raised an outcry among mainstream Jewish organizations and leaders. Those two words, in a brief section about Israel, are “apartheid” and “genocide.” The August 1 manifesto, penned by a coalition…
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