The co-chair of a task force set up by Harvard University to combat antisemitism has resigned. It is the second high-profile resignation in the university’s efforts to address complaints by Jewish students  that they have felt uncomfortable on campus since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel. In that attack, scores of citizens were slaughtered and nearly 200 taken as hostages, some of them children and seniors. The co-chair, Raffaella Sadun, a professor of business [...]

Five Israeli groups supporting Israelis held hostage in Gaza will receive the 2024 Genesis Prize, the $1 million award known as the “Jewish Nobel.” Presented annually since 2013, the award is given by the Genesis Prize Foundation, and historically has gone to Jewish celebrities or public figures. More recently, the foundation has given the prize to organizations that together are tackling a crisis in the Jewish community, including in 2022 when it honored groups [...]

As a response to the tense climate on campus at Barnard College and Columbia University since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, students at Barnard may no longer display messages on their dorm doors, said an email from Leslie Grinage, the college’s dean. Some students at Barnard and Columbia University, of which it is a part, have placed signs on their dormitory doors charging Israel with genocide in Gaza and of being an illegitimate state. [...]

The Faculty for Justice in Palestine at the University of Pennsylvania is suing the school in an attempt to stop it from participating in a U.S. Department of Education investigation into antisemitism on campus. The New York Civil Liberties Union and an organization that represents pro-Palestinian activists are suing Columbia University for what they describe as the “unlawful suspension” of two pro-Palestinian student groups on campus. But now, Columbia is considering reinstating its chapters of [...]

When Aaron Lansky was studying Yiddish literature at McGill University, he was having difficulty finding the books he needed. First generation Jewish Americans, escaping pogroms and poverty abroad, had flocked to America, bringing their Yiddish books with them. But, Mr. Lansky wondered, what would happen to those books left to their children, who did not speak the language? In an article published Feb. 29 in The New York Times, Joseph Berger chronicled the events that [...]

It’s been four years since the British Jewish comedy show, “Friday Night Dinner,” aired its sixth and final season. But this month, the story is finally coming to America with an adaptation called “Dinner With the Parents,” starring Michaela Watkins and Carol Kane. It will stream on Amazon FreeVee, the first four episodes starting April 18, a few days before Passover. The show is about Shabbat dinners at the home of one chaotic Jewish family.

On April 8, North America will experience its second total solar eclipse in seven years. The moon will glide over the surface of our sun, casting a shadow over a swath of Earth below. Along this path, the world will turn dark as night.             In cosmic terms, it is unusual that this happens: the moon is about 400 times smaller than the sun, but it is about 400 times closer to us. That means [...]

The dinner menu on Jan. 26 at Ayat, a restaurant in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, included challah, a staple of Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine and a traditional offering on a Shabbat table. The bread was served with a complete dinner to more than a thousand guests who responded to an invitation to a free Shabbat dinner posted on Ayat’s Instagram page. “It’s about breaking barriers, fostering dialogue, and connecting on a human level. This evening is more [...]

Photographer Gillian Laub orchestrated a sweeping public art project in which her portraits of Holocaust survivors would be projected on the facades of buildings and landmark structures across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Here, Rabbi Aliza Erber, age 80, is projected against the Brooklyn Bridge on Jan. 27, the United Nations’ designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day, to draw attention to the Live2Tell project. “The number of Holocaust survivors in the world is dwindling, but the story must [...]

About 1,400 Torahs that survived the Holocaust in Moravia and Bohemia, were first shipped to the Jewish Museum in Prague and are now part of the Memorial Scrolls Trust, the London organization that administers the collection. The scrolls are never sold or gifted, but are allocated on permanent loan to synagogues that request one, The New York Times reported. Many of the scrolls had been burned, waterlogged, torn or scarred when synagogues were destroyed during [...]