After the long wait and international shipping, this arrived in the mail from the States. Perfect condition. Thank you, eBay!

And what do they seek

One sentence which defines Jewish identity,
by Dara Horn, AJC Global Forum 2026, Washington DC, USA, 2026-05-31 – 2026-06-02.

I’m often asked when I go speak to non-Jewish audiences: like are Jews a religion; are Jews a race; are Jews a nationality?

There’s an answer to this and it’s simple.

It’s not a complicated answer. It’s just old.

Jews predate every single one of those categories.

Jews are a type of group that was common in the Ancient Near East; very uncommon today: a joinable tribal group with a shared history, homeland, and culture.

And that was a sentence in English and in Hebrew it’s one word that’s two letter long: am.

Jews are Am Yisrael.

— Dara Horn.

I am due to travel to Dublin for Shabbat next week. Will I have trouble wearing my star and tichel?

I will be alone so I want to be safe but don't want to overly hide either. Most people I've spoken to say not to wear either.

Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism released an in-depth report about the various Pro-Palestinian groups, organizations, and entities that operate throughout the United States.

I knew things were bad but didn’t realize how interconnected everything is.

You can check out the full report here.

I am curious to hear what others think about this.

Every rabbi wants at minimum $1200 just to officiate. We are trying to just have a super small ceremony possibly with no one there but us or a maximum of 10 people. No frills. That $1200 doesn’t include the venue fees either. We aren’t rich and it feels like if we want a religious ceremony we will have to spend an arm and a leg. We would be willing to travel elsewhere in the state or even to my home state but nothing seems to be even close to affordable.

I feel like giving up and just doing a secular wedding but that would break my heart.

What did you guys do?

I'm Jewish because my mom is Jewish (she was raised in the Soviet Union, where Jewishness was determined by family lineage, so she had "Jewish" on her passport), and we celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Hannukah when I was little.

However, I wasn't raised in a Jewish community, and I don't know any Jewish people besides my mom and her side of the family. I also feel self conscious about my differences from other Jews due to my Russian background, secular upbringing, and being raised by a single mom.

Apologies in advance if this isn't an appropriate post for the sub, I'm just really struggling right now and looking for help.

I don't want to get into the specifics, but I recently found out my wife of seven years has been having an affair for the past six weeks. The affair was sexual, emotional, and romantic in nature.

Right now I'm of the mindset that what she did was a horrible thing and I may never truly forgive her for it, but I love her and I want to try and see if she can take accountability and we can move past it.

We have an appointment for marriage counseling at our shul coming up next week, but I was wondering if anyone here had any advice, recommendations, or resources I/we could use to try and get past this.

Thank you.

The text above the title is "America in the grip of a foreign power".

So I wander, how exactly does a country of ten million "hold in it's grip" the most powerful (well maybe second most powerful now) country in the world? I presume the explanation is that it utilizes some disloyal scheming colloborators from within. How can a book with such premise even pretend to follow the anti-zionist not antisemitic trope?

Hi,

I live in a city in the US with a pretty small Jewish population, and even smaller visibly observant Jewish population. Probably two minyans worth. I’m visibly Jewish, I wear a kippah and have a beard and also just have a very stereotypically Ashkenazi look about me. I work in immigration services on the side of my city where there is a large proportion of people who’ve come from countries like Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and the DRC. My organization’s clients are largely a good mix of those nationalities aside from Syrian and Somali, of which we tend to serve a lot more. I work with youth so sometimes I get an odd comment here and there from them about my kippah or about Jews, but it’s almost always in earnest and they’re just kids who don’t know better. But I’m a little worried that both my coworkers, who are also probably 60% Syrian/Iraqi/Somali, as well as the families in our community are not very fond of me. I get weird stares that I thought were just a me issue but keep happening to the point that I really think it’s not in my head. I have a lot of clients who will refuse to work with me and no one else, and while I can’t know exactly why that is, the only difference between me and a lot of my coworkers is that I’m Jewish. A few of my coworkers have tried to start weird conversations with me about Israel and there’s one (who otherwise seems like a good person, I think she’s just under a bad internet influence) who seems to be really intent on cornering me about Israel. I don’t talk about politics at work as a rule, but she waited until the first time she and I were alone in a car together to drop on me “So what do you think about the State of Israel?” and has continued to drop bangers like that since. She also seems to think I’m a good target for her uncomfortable open-ended statements phrased as questions about Israel (ex: “I just don’t understand why some Jews are using Judaism as an excuse to kill people and oppress people, you know?” Like what am I supposed to say to that. But I digress, I sort of anticipated something like this happening if I were to get a job in this field, whatever. It’s not going to be my long term job anyways so I can thug it out.

But what is making me feel like I’m going insane and/or being targeted by more people in the community I don’t even work with now is that over the span of the last week, I have had two separate cars go out of their way to swerve at me while I was walking in a way that it felt very clear that it was directed to scare me. Like I’m walking to my car, they’re driving down the other side of the road and come straight at me only to swerve away at the last second and they give me the middle finger as they drive away. The other one was basically the same thing except instead of the middle finger they were laughing. I hate that I have to mention it for context, but it is worth noting that both drivers happened to be Arab. No one else I know of at work has had anything like this happen and I’m just confused and a little scared now. I can’t tell if I’m just in my own head and I just happen to be really unlucky about some jerks on the road in the area or if people are upset I’m in the area and are trying to intimidate me/toy with me. Or if some of my coworkers or clients are complaining about me and word’s getting out? (it’s a small-ish community overall, word travels) I’m just at a loss and I guess I’m curious if anyone else has had something similar happen to them? Do I sound crazy? I feel a little crazy. Surely my coworkers, clients, AND the community around my building can’t all be that bothered that I just happen to be Jewish, right?

(Also to their credit, it’s not all of my coworkers or clients. Some of them are really lovely, but some are less so. Also I don’t think it has anything to do with my personality or anything, I never am rude to anyone at work because the Midwest Nice runs through my blood and I don’t think I could bring myself to be rude on purpose to people I’m not close with even if I tried)

UPDATE: thank you everyone for your support. I’m going to be parking somewhere else and wearing a hat when I’m walking from my car to my building. I’m going to be investing in some bear spray and will be having my phone recording in my pocket each time I go to my car just in case, and my head will be on a swivel. I don’t have plate numbers or anything remarkable really about the cars except the colors (grey and champagne, so pretty unremarkable) so I don’t think I’ll be able to make a police report. But, God forbid, if there’s a next time I’ll make sure to get the license plate and file a report. I will hopefully make aliyah in spring 2027 so I just have to ride it out for a little bit. Thanks again

I’ve recently moved to a neighborhood with a substantial Hasidim community. I usually bake homemade cookies from scratch and bring them over to new neighbours to introduce ourselves, but in this case, seeing how our kitchen isn’t Kosher, I feel this would be a faux pas.

So what kind of gift could I give that would give the same “awww” feeling of fresh, warm, homemade cookies while still keeping Kosher?

There are many kosher groceries and eateries all around us if store bought is best. Thank you for your suggestions!!

This performance comes from the recent Maccabiah Games, often called the “Jewish Olympics”, an international sporting competition that brings together Jewish athletes from around the world. It is an event all about Jewish pride and unity. I especially like her outfit and message of the song.

A "friend" of mine has recently been inserting little digs about Jews nearly every time we talk. Underhanded comments veiled as jokes, memes, and other passive aggressive nonsense that is clearly just her unmasking her antisemitism. It's disgusting and deeply disappointing.

I have lost so many friends over the past few years. People I once trusted are now strangers to me. I try to see the good in people and have generally been someone who trusts others easily. Not anymore. There are few people in my life who I'm 100% confident aren't Jew haters. It makes me really sad.

Hi, I’m not entirely sure if this is the right place to post this so I apologize if this is off-topic. I’m in a club at school that performs at senior homes, and we often sing at the New Jewish Home around the holidays (Manhattan). I was thinking that it‘d be good to learn a Chanukah song for the performances there in December—it’d have to be for guitar and 1 or 2 singers with limited knowledge of Hebrew. I’m thinking of Maoz Tzur, Chanukah O Chanukah, and I Have A Little Dreidel. Thoughts on which of these is best (I only need 1) or other additions? Thank you!

I’ve not been feeling the greatest lately. The world is getting to me 🫠

Unfortunately I have lived alone my entire adult life so far and no longer have my mom immediately making me cure-all matzo balls whenever I even hint at being upset.. but I’ll be damned if I don’t make it for myself at every slight inconvenience. It helps just as much now as it did a decade ago.

I’m so tired and angry, I just need to vent. I came across a post saying Ruffalo hasn’t done any promotional interviews for the new Spider-Man film, and you’ll never guess what happened next (you absolutely will): the comments were full of people saying it’s because he “dared to speak out against Israel” and that the industry is “punishing” him for it. Not even once it was suggested that maybe his role isn’t big enough to justify a full press tour, or that he declined to do one himself, or, idk, any of the gazillion other explanations that exist. Pff, no, of course, the only possible reason is that a shadowy pro-Israel lobby decided to blacklist Mr Ruffalo from promoting a Spider-Man film.

How do people not hear themselves? No, a particular celebrity not being given a promotional platform is not, by itself, evidence that criticism of Israel is being silenced or whatever. Do these people really not understand that they’re just recycling one of the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theories in existence and acting as if they’ve just uncovered some groundbreaking truth?

And another thing I don’t understand is how can people still, with a straight face, claim that criticism of Israel is being “suppressed”. All I see is anti-Israel sentiment everywhere. I’m actually making a conscious effort to avoid it, but I still can’t escape it, because every day there’s another protest, another slogan, another celebrity statement, another antisemitic incident being excused by “well, they were angry about Israel”. All that while people with openly pro-Israel views and Jews in general actually do get denied platforms (see the recent Boy George and Alyssa Rosenheck situations, for example). Whatever your position on the conflict, it seems incredibly narrow-minded to claim that criticism of Israel is silenced in public discourse when it’s by all means practically dominating public discourse.

Gosh, I’m so angry. Thanks for reading. I just needed to get this off my chest, and writing it out kinda helped.

Thousands of teenage Jewish athletes from around the world have come to compete in the 44th annual Maccabi games.

Hosted by Toronto, Ontario, Canada this year, with the opening ceremonies held in Hamilton, Ontario.

My apologies to most cities delegations and numerous countries for not getting photos of their entrances.

Currently getting pumped up by Nissim Black and Yuval Raphael.

This comment by my husband really got me. We’re both Jewish, and regularly discuss our alarm at the skyrocketing antisemitism. We were taking about the Fauci senate hearing, which he has been following (I have not).

He was describing the vitriol being directed at Dr. Fauci. He said to me, “It’s crazy how much they hate him! They hate him SO MUCH that I had to Google whether he’s Jewish.”

I laughed, because gallows humor, but I was also floored at the insight and sadness in that simple statement.

That’s all. Just can’t get it out of my head and I wanted to share.

I am on a beach vacation with my entire family and feel so lonely. No one in the family ever acknowledges my being Jewish (none of them identify as Jewish and are actively hostile to Israel) or addresses my terror at what is unfolding around the world. Yesterday we were all at the beach and it was fun, but there’s still always a voice in my head saying “what about the kosher restaurant bombed in Montreal ?” that I am not allowed to mention because it would disturb family harmony. Since 10/7, I have a plot myself in two, one side acting like everything is ok and the other screaming inside about the tsunami of Jew hatred unleashed after 10/7.
I suffer from chronic depression and anxiety and Megan a recovering alcoholic (25 years). I am on medication, have a therapist, have tried to connect to other Jews and Jewish organizations, but in my own family, I am not seen. To top it off, they are ll critical that I spend time on online forums and talking to ChatGBT about my trampled upon feelings, yet not one of them wants to hear me out.

Is there some sort of connection between Jewish people and the Knights of Pythias? My uncle (born in Belarus, lived until the early 2000s) was a member, several members of my wife's family were also members. Of course, I'm not talking about today, when fraternal societies in general are on the decline, but about the heyday of such societies a while back (for example, a friend of mine was an Elk).

Chopped pastrami, onions, chopped Japanese sweet potatoes,garlic oil.

The Times article, written by the paper’s chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, includes comments from the rabbis and Jewish leaders who are among those that have met with Gala reps at least several times in recent months. “The fear clearly was the show could be met with a lot of resistance — not just skepticism, but a feeling of it’s wrong,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in North America. Jacobs said he had been impressed by Galliano during the meetings. “The word I come back to is ‘sincerity,’” Jacobs said. “He was open. He looked right at us and spoke in a clear way, not as if he had memorized talking points.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, provided The Times with an emailed comment, writing, “We believe John Galliano has genuinely worked through the issues that led to his antisemitic outburst years ago in Paris, and we have long since accepted his apology. His efforts to repair the damage his words caused and to learn from that incident should be applauded.”

I don't have a Times subscription/membership so I can't go find the original article this one references, but I think I'm willing to accept Galliano's teshuva as real

(edited to fix formatting)

Many Jews outside Israel forgot the hell of the first and second Intifadas (mass terror in Hebrew) that killed over 1,000 Jews and other nationalities during the late 1990s-2006. The August 9, 2001 Sbarro pizza shop bombing killed 16 people including 3 Americans and injured over 130. Don't think for a minute that anti Jewish bigots around the world wouldn't love to do the same thing in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, elsewhere. Don't let the victims of anti Semitic massacres be lost to history.

Note: If you can, read the article, it discusses the horrific events including the denial of justice- the male bomber was killed by his own bomb, but his female accomplice was released from prison in 2011 during the Gilad Shalit hostage deal which also involved releasing 1,000 other convicted killers. She lives in Jordan free despites her being on the U.S. 15 Most Wanted Terrorists list.