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Menachem Wecker

Menachem Wecker is the U.S. bureau news editor of JNS.

“A less thoughtful and more self-sabotaging statement would be hard to imagine,” Rabbi David Wolpe, rabbi emeritus of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, told JNS of one of the mayor’s comments.
Although Jews make up an estimated 3.25% of California residents, anti-Jewish hate crimes made up almost 14.8% of all hate crimes in the state last year.
“The teachers we have, we don’t respect and support in the way that they deserve,” Paul Bernstein told JNS. “If we’re successful and we grow enrollment, that problem only gets bigger.”
“My sense is that John wanted to retire with the confidence that, in the absence of the first generation of Catholic and Jewish leaders who lay the foundation of friendship, these relations would grow and thrive,” the scholar Malka Simkovich told JNS.
A JNS analysis suggests that since New York City started telling the public only about percentage change in “confirmed” hate crimes year over year, it has suggested no change, but that if it reported data that way about “reported” hate crimes, there would be a 32% increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city from March to May compared to last year.
The late Jewish representative from Massachusetts “approached Israel as a liberal Zionist: engaged, critical and deeply committed,” William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents, told JNS.
Barbara Feingold, a board member at the Republican Jewish Coalition, which spent $5 million supporting Gallrein who defeated Massie, told JNS that voters “don’t want someone who is a blatant antisemite.”
“In many ways, speaking openly about faith can actually feel more natural outside of Washington,” Arielle Roth, administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, told JNS.
“It’s both a Jewish story and an American story at the same time,” a curator at the Washington, D.C., museum told JNS of a series by Mitch Epstein.
The governor’s office is awaiting information from the federal government about whether there are any “poison pills that could harm New York’s education system,” a spokesman told JNS.
Sam Markstein, of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told JNS that Mamdani’s first veto as mayor “serves to accommodate vile antisemitic protests comes as no surprise.”
“He wants to flex his authority as mayor of New York City, so he brings the desk outside to show he should be taken seriously,” Beverly Hallberg, president of District Media Group, told JNS.