(JTA) — When the question came, Columbia University’s president was ready. Her answer was “Yes.” Just minutes into a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism on Wednesday, Nemat Shafik had been asked, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Columbia’s code of conduct?” It was a knowing repeat of the now-infamous question that cost the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania their jobs. When those two leaders faced the same House panel in December amid rising antisemitism on their campuses, they hedged in their answers. This time a Democrat, Oregon Rep. Suzanne Bonam ..read more

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The number of FBI investigations into anti-Jewish hate crimes tripled in the months after Oct. 7, FBI director Christopher Wray told Jewish leaders on a call Wednesday. Wray also warned that, amid the Israel-Iran conflict, Iranian proxies could attack targets on American soil. “For just a few days after the Oct. 7 attack, we’d already seen a rapid uptick in threats to Jewish people in the United States,” Wray said a call with Jewish community security officials and lay leaders. “Since then, we’ve seen the threat elevated,” he added. “So to be more specific, between Oct. 7 an ..read more

(JTA) — The mother of 23-year-old Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, is one of nearly a dozen Jews on Time Magazine’s 100 “Most Influential” list, couched among comedians, writers, music producers, athletes, business executives, and politicians. Since Oct. 7, Rachel Goldberg-Polin has become one of the most prominent and indefatigable voices advocating for the release of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza. She has attended an audience with Pope Francis, Zoomed with President Joe Biden and spoken at the United Nations, in addition to cultivating ..read more

Police arrested nine Google employees Tuesday during sit-ins at Google offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, one of the protesters told The Washington Post. The employees demanded that Google cut ties with Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Israeli government contract for Google and Amazon’s cloud computing services.  Protesters at the Sunnyvale location entered Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office and those in New York gathered in a common area on the 10th floor of the company’s downtown offices. In both locations, the arrests occurred at about 10 p.m. Eastern Time — between ..read more

Imagine for a moment that the University of Southern California let Asna Tabassum speak. Imagine that instead of rescinding its invitation to have Tabassum deliver the valedictorian address, which the university did on Monday citing security threats, USC stood by its initial decision and said Tabassum would be allowed to speak as planned, albeit with heightened security measures to ensure her safety and the safety of all students and attendees. What would have happened? The pro-Israel groups that opposed her appearance would have continued to criticize the invitation. Students and alumni on di ..read more

A confidential letter obtained by the Forward shows that investigations have been opened over the conduct of several Columbia University professors accused of making antisemitic and anti-Israel comments in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct 7 attacks. The letter expands on the testimony of the university’s president, who was  grilled on Capitol Hill Wednesday over a pair of professors, one accused of celebrating Hamas Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and another accused of making bigoted generalizations about Israeli students. What had President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik done about it, pressed Rep. Elise ..read more

אין דער ביכער־סעריע „ייִדיש: אױסגאַבעס און פֿאָרשונגען“ בײַם פֿאַרלאַג פֿונעם דיסלדאָרפֿער אוניװערסיטעט איז אַרױס אַ נײַע אַקאַדעמישע אױפֿלאַגע פֿון עליע פֿאַלקאָװיטשעס בוך ״ייִדיש׃ פֿאָנעטיק, גראַפֿיק, לעקסיק און גראַמאַטיק״. די ערשטע פּובליקאַציע פֿונעם דאָזיקן בוך איז געװען אין 1940 ..read more

With the publication of new editions of books by Sidney Joseph Perelman in the prestigious Library of America (LOA) series, one might be inclined to ask whether Perelman is really a humorist for the ages. Following up on a 2011 LOA anthology of Perelman’s work, the volumes, Crazy Like a Fox and Cloudland Revisited, feature wordplay inspired by banalities of American popular publishing and film culture. Perelman was born in New York and raised in Rhode Island, where a boyhood friend was the Hebrew scholar Israel James Kapstein. Perelman’s father Joseph failed as a grocer and chicken farmer ..read more

When an obscure Irish writer living in Paris completed the draft of a play on Jan. 29, 1949, it was, he later remarked, little more than a “diversion” from the trilogy of novels on which he had been laboring. For a moment, he considered naming the play, which he had written in French, En attendant. But for once deciding that more, rather than less, was more, the author added a third word to the title: En attendant Godot. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the birth of the work the world of theater had been waiting for: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. First performed in Paris in 1953 ..read more

The number of Jews immigrating to Israel has dropped 43% in the six months since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks. From April to September 2023, 23,073 people moved to Israel under the Law of Return. From October 2023 to March 2024, the number dropped to 12,977.  The statistics were provided by the Jewish Agency for Israel, which is funded by the Jewish Federations of North America and authorized by the Israeli government to assist Jews in diaspora in moving to Israel. The Law of Return grants people with at least one Jewish grandparent and their spouses the right to Israeli citizenship. Numbers for ..read more