(JTA) — Artist Anish Kapoor was named the winner of the 2017 Genesis Prize. Kapoor was named the winner on Sunday of the annual $1 million prize that has been dubbed the “Jewish Nobel.” He joins Itzhak Perlman, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and actor-director Michael Douglas as recipients. Known as ‘the Jewish…
“He’s a Nazi.” “This is just as bad as the Holocaust.” Outrage like this has seemingly become the norm within American political discourse. Whenever a policy seems crass— or someone sees the specter of fascism— the American public is quick to deem the perpetrator to be Nazi. Since Donald Trump announced his candidacy on the…
On January 31, the Forward published a letter from the leadership of another Jewish organization that directly challenged the position of Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) on the Refugee and Muslim Ban, signed by President Trump on January 25, 2017, which happened to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day. During the 1930s and 1940s, there were…
In our annual progression through the Torah, we are now deep into slavery in Egypt. And each year, around this time, as I read the first Torah portions in Exodus, the same thought occurs to me: Why is all this necessary? By the end of Jacob’s life, he’s back in the Land of Israel, the…
The abandoned 428-year-old synagogue in Sharhorod, Ukraine stands as a powerful reminder of why millions of Jews in the world now call themselves Americans. I traveled there last week from my home in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, to better understand where my family comes from. Six of my eight great-grandparents fled villages like Sharhorod – places…
With the election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States on November 8, 2016, our country experienced a political earthquake. It put all Americans on notice that the four years of the Trump presidency will present a challenge to maintain the foundations of our country: free-speech, free press, freedom of religion, peaceful…
There is a huge amount of rage being directed at President Donald Trump’s administration over it’s temporary ban on immigrants and visa holders from 6 countries in the Middle East and indefinite ban on Syrians entering the country. Uber has lost clients, Iraq and Iran have sought to ban US citizens from traveling there, an…
Being a refugee is no abstract idea for Julia Ioffe, the high-wattage political writer who fled the Soviet Union as a 6-year-old back in 1988. As President Trump’s executive order that temporarily and indefinitely bans immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries take effect, she published an essay in the Atlantic Sunday that recalls some of those…
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