Free Republic

A Bronx judge went rogue on Sunday and set $30,000 bail for the alleged vandal charged with terrorizing Riverdale’s Jewish community — even though the man was set to be sprung under the state’s new bail reform laws. Jordan Burnette, 29, was hit with 42 charges, including a number of hate crime-related offenses for smashing windows at various synagogues. But none of them are on the so-called “bail eligible” list, prosecutors noted at his arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court. “Given the number of attacks, we probably would have asked for substantial bail before January of 2020,” Assistant District Attorney Theresa...

Teachers union president Randi Weingarten channels Marx calling Jews 'privileged' members of the 'ownership class' to justify the harm she’s doing to children.What is motivating teachers unions to keep public schools closed for as long as possible?We’ve constantly heard from the left about the need to “follow the science” in dealing with the coronavirus, as President Joe Biden has repeatedly pledged to do. Yet the gap between administration policies or even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and the scientific facts about how the virus is spread is considerable.Given that we’ve known since last summer that younger...

Members of the Los Angeles Jewish community are upset at the closure of Ralph’s supermarket, in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, after the L.A. City Council mandated an additional $5 per hour of “hero pay” for employees for four months.

Dennis invites you into his home as he conducts a virtual Passover Seder (recorded April 2020). Watch and learn as Dennis explains the meaning of the rituals, but if you want to participate along with Dennis, you’ll need the standard Passover accoutrements (one per person in your household): 1) Matzo 2) Salt water 3) Parsley 4) A hard-boiled egg 5) Horseradish 6) Charoset — a mix of nuts, raisins, and honey 7) Haggadah

Convicted spy laments US Jews see themselves as more American than Jewish, suggests he’d counsel Jew working in American security apparatus to spy for Israel even nowJonathan Pollard, the convicted spy for Israel whose story haunted the American Jewish community’s relations with the US government for decades, is unrepentant.“The bottom line on this charge of dual loyalty is, I’m sorry, we’re Jews, and if we’re Jews, we will always have dual loyalty,” Pollard said in an interview published Thursday in Israel Hayom, his first extensive remarks since his release from prison in 2015.Pollard recalled how much of the Jewish leadership...

Just before authorities released the names of the victims of the Boulder, Colorado shooting, Liz Hanson woke up and got dressed, slipping into a pair of tie-dyed pants she bought at the store of her friend Lonna Bartkowiak. Moments later she learned that Bartkowiak, 49, had been shot and killed. “I found out she was gone,” Hanson said in an interview with the Forward . “I looked down at my pants because she had bought them at her store – she picked them out for me.”........Hanson is a member of Congregation Bonai Shalom, where London-native Rabbi Marc Soloway serves as...

Let’s stop kidding ourselves. The political frippery over race has nothing to do with race. Black oppression in today’s America is fiction. The growing snarls against “whiteness” come more from Cain-and-Abel stuff: envy, hatred, revenge, arrogance, blame, guilt, and greed. Few groups understand this like the Jews. They’ve been hated by one group or another since Pharaoh enslaved their Hebrew ancestors over 3,500 years ago. But the pharaohs are gone. The Assyrian Empire that destroyed Israel’s northern kingdom in 722 B.C., is gone. The Philistines and Babylonians are gone. Haman, who asked the King of Persia to kill all Jews...

The same symbol whose sight would make me feel uncomfortable, even unsafe, back home, sparked in me some sort of relief and sympathy on this distant island onsidering that we would be in Taiwan for 24 hours total, my travel buddy and I didn’t worry too much about finding kosher food. We’d arrive on a plane in the morning and leave on another plane the following morning. We’d bring our usual picnic bag with challah rolls and other sorts of Jewish foods we always take with us when we fly abroad. Still, I wanted to make sure we’d easily find...

NBC continues to face criticism for a series of incidents that have been labeled "anti-Semitic," with a scene from the show "Nurses" taking heat for a scene that has been widely condemned for the way it portrayed a Hasidic patient who refused a bone graft from a "goyim," an Arab or a woman. The resurfaced clip comes as NBCUniversal was already facing criticism for a joke made on "Saturday Night Live" this week as well as a segment on MSNBC earlier this month involving Mehdi Hassan. The American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) head of young leadership Seffi Kogen tweeted a clip...

David Schoen unwittingly gave Twitter a lesson in orthodox Jewish customs during former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on Tuesday. Schoen, Trump’s attorney, rested his hand on top of his head each time he took a sip of water while making his opening argument that the case is unconstitutional. Several viewers noted Schoen’s seemingly unusual drinking habit, with some even suggesting he was trying to keep a toupee from falling. But the lawyer was likely making the ritual move because he is religiously observant. Rabbi Menchem Genack, CEO of the kosher division of the Orthodox Union, explained that since Schoen...

Sunday I am wildly dizzy. Just really dizzy. I know why. It’s because in my lifetime, I have seen the people of this great country elect a president and vice president who are explicit fans of the worst anti-Semites in the public forum we have ever seen. Yes, Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris are open, smack-me-in-the-face fans and boosters of a certain Rev. Warnock, who is a wild Jew-hater and admirer of the worst Jew-hater ever in American history, Louis Farrakhan. This means we have a fully racist, anti-Jew administration in 2020. And they were elected by a huge majority...

Kamala Harris, or ‘Black Hillary’ as Redstater Jeff Charles calls her, has got to be the most cringe politician of the last decade, at least in so far as someone who has risen to the top levels of our government. To the extent that there’s a comparison, and there certainly is, she makes Hillary look charismatic. Almost as if to provide more evidence of this, the Biden transition team decided it’d be a good idea to ask Harris what Hanukkah is about on video, because being married to a secular Jewish man apparently qualifies her to do so. What follows...

For this year’s Hanukkah, Amir is lighting menorah candles and reciting blessings to celebrate the holiday’s eight nights, as many Jews are around the world. But he does so in secret, worried that Chinese officials will come around – as they often do on religious occasions – to enforce a ban against Judaism, pressuring him to renounce his faith. Sometimes, he’s even called in for interrogations. “Every time we celebrate, we are scared,” said Amir, not his real name as he asked not to be identified over worries of retaliation. "Whatever we do, we’re always very careful to make sure...

The Jewish Community of Warsaw issued a special statement supporting the protesters after the Constitutional Court's judgment on abortion. "We understand the bitterness of women in Poland, including members of the Jewish Community in Warsaw , related to depriving them of the possibility to decide about their life and health, as well as the lives of their families," we read in a statement published in social media. "It is sad and painful that today women and the men supporting them are forced to defend their rights on the streets of Warsaw and all over Poland in the time of...

Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord. For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. ( Jeremiah 2:11-12)The Noahide movement, which is literally attracting hundreds of former Christians, drawing them into Torah observance, and even to the point of renouncing Christ, comes straight out of Rabbinic Judaism. Rabbis are the engine driving this resurgence of the Galatian heresy, and the sin which the book of Hebrews was written to...

“In the Last days, many shall depart from the faith giving heed to seeding Spirits and Doctrines of Devils…” (I Timothy 4:1)If you want to see shocking apostasy on display, look no further than what is called the Noahide movement. Noachides, are gentiles who do not want to convert to Judaism, but are intrigued by it, attracted to it, and open to it’s vigorous criticism of Christianity. Since all living men are descended from Noah and one of his Sons, Rabbis teach that Righteousness for Gentiles comes by subscription to one of the seven General laws for all men. It...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has rebuffed requests to meet with New York’s prominent Jewish leaders. The heads of both the Jewish Community Relations Council and the New York Board of Rabbis said they’ve sought sit-downs with the first-term “Democratic socialist” congresswoman — to no avail. “I requested a meeting with her and it has not come to fruition,” JCRC executive director Michael Miller told The Post. “A meeting has been requested on more than one occasion. It hasn’t happened. I’m still interested in meeting with her.”

Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. It is meant to be a time of intense self-examination. In light of that, I offer this column. The question I receive more than any other from non-Jews is: Why are so many Jews on the left? Before addressing it, I should note that the same question could be asked of Christians and other non-Jews. Why have so many mainstream Protestants and Catholics (up to and including the pope) embraced the left? Why have nearly all blacks, the majority of Hispanics and Asian Americans, the most successful ethnic group...

Parents of students attending Jewish schools in New York City are being encouraged not to have their children tested for COVID-19 to prevent the schools from being shut down. On Thursday, this message made the rounds on WhatsApp, a popular messaging platform in Orthodox communities: “DO NOT test your child for covid,” the message began. “The city has released new guidelines that mandate CLOSURE of an ENTIRE SCHOOL if there are two positive tests in the school.” It went on to encourage parents to obscure suspected COVID-19 infections among their children. “If your child is sick please keep them home,...

Direct mail coming from Nancy Pelosi’s House Majority PAC appears to accentuate but not modify the size of a Jewish Republican congressional candidate’s nose and depicts the candidate with loads of hundred dollar bills. One of the three mailers show a digitally-altered David Richter with a suit jacket lined with money, with additional cash in his pockets and in a cardboard box behind him. The others portray a similar tone. “The photo-shopped caricatures of me portrayed in these mailers, always surrounded by piles of cash, is a well-known dog whistle to those who want to further divide our country in...