Latest news with #Shabbos
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Jewish student settles religious discrimination suit against Columbia
FIRST ON FOX: A Jewish student who alleged she was forced out of her graduate program in part because of her Shabbos observance has settled her religious discrimination lawsuit against Columbia University. The terms of the settlement in the lawsuit filed by The Lawfare Project and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP were confidential, but Lawfare Project executive Ziporah Reich said it included financial compensation and other relief. "These outcomes reflect the power of legal action to bring about meaningful change, we are proud to stand behind a courageous student who chose to stand up for her rights," Lawfare Project Director Brooke Goldstein told Fox News Digital in a statement. A Columbia spokesperson confirmed the settlement, saying, "We have reached a mutually agreeable confidential settlement with Forrest that did not include any admission of liability." Trump Admin Alleges Columbia Violated Civil Rights Law With 'Deliberate Indifference' To Campus Protests Mackenzie Forrest, an Orthodox Jewish student from Florida, claimed she was forced out of the Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) program at the Columbia School of Social Work (CSSW), after she requested that she be allowed to attend classes remotely out of concern for her safety amid widespread antisemitic campus unrest following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks. Read On The Fox News App Forrest alleged that she attended the Columbia School of Social Work specifically because of her interest in the DBT program. However, when she informed the program's director, Andre Ivanoff, Ph.D., that she would not be able to engage in classroom activities that fall on the Jewish Sabbath shortly after she was accepted in Spring 2023, Ivanoff allegedly replied that that would be a "problem," court documents say. Columbia University Punishes Students Who Took Over Building During Anti-israel Protests The Jewish graduate student received further pushback regarding her religious practices when she informed Ivanoff that she would be unable to attend a weekend-long workshop on suicide risk assessment because it fell on Shabbos, also known as the Sabbath. Despite Forrest saying that she could attend the parts of the workshop that did not occur between Friday night to Saturday night, Ivanoff allegedly told her she would need a "dispensation" from her rabbi to attend the workshop. Eventually, Ivanoff decided he would assign her substitute coursework in lieu of the workshop when Forrest informed him he could not attend. Following the Oct. 7 attacks in 2023, Columbia's campus exploded into a hotbed of antisemitism. In light of what the plaintiff claimed was widespread verbal abuse and a physical assault of a pro-Israel student who was allegedly beaten with what appeared to be a broom, Forrest requested that she be allowed to attend class remotely out of fear for her safety. Not only was the grad student's request denied, but soon after she claimed she faced retaliation from the university. Despite being a straight-A student, Forrest was told she was at risk of failing the field-based internship portion of her curriculum, according to the claim. The Jewish student alleged that she had never previously been told she was under-performing by her academic advisor, whom she met with article source: Jewish student settles religious discrimination suit against Columbia
Cedar News
30-03-2025
- Cedar News
Mother and Two Daughters Killed in Brooklyn Crash While Walking Home from Synagogue
BROOKLYN – A tragic accident in Brooklyn claimed the lives of a mother and her two young daughters as they walked home from synagogue on Shabbos. The crash, involving a driver with a suspended license, left the woman's 4-year-old son critically injured and sent shockwaves through the local community.
New York Times
07-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Andrew Cuomo's Pro-Israel Group Promised Big Plans. It Delivered Little.
Last year, as a growing schism over Israel tore at the Democratic Party, Andrew M. Cuomo threw himself into the fray. He announced he would lead a new advocacy group leveraging his clout as New York's former governor to beat back growing anti-Israel sentiment on the left. The group, Never Again, NOW!, offered an ambitious slate of plans for the summer and fall. In a speech outlining them at a synagogue in the Hamptons last summer, Mr. Cuomo likened himself to a 'Shabbos goy,' a non-Jew who traditionally helps Jewish people on the Sabbath. 'The hour is getting late, my friends,' he said, 'and now is the time to act.' Almost a year later, though, the Cuomo group's promises appear to have amounted to little beyond a few private informational receptions and opinion essays. Never Again, NOW! never convened the summer symposium it said would expose 'the truth about anti-Zionist rhetoric' on college campuses, nor an advertised lecture series in the fall. It has yet to launch the educational hub on Israel and Hamas still promised on its bare-bones web page. And AdImpact, a tracking firm, could find no record that the television ads the group said would air last July actually did. Mr. Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021, has entered this year's race for mayor of New York City. Credit... Shuran Huang for The New York Times Now, as Mr. Cuomo begins a comeback campaign for mayor of New York City, the group's work provides one of the clearest windows into how he has sought to use well-timed political projects to re-enter the public sphere after his scandal-tarred resignation as governor. Others included a national gun safety group and a new political action committee to support favored candidates. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
CBC
05-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
How I learned to embrace the intersections of my identity by finally enrolling in Hogwarts
Emerging Queer Voices is a monthly LGBTQ arts and culture column that features different up-and-coming LGBTQ writers. You can read more about the series and find all published editions here. Looking at me, you would hardly guess I used to have a deeply committed relationship with itchy below-the-knee skirts from the Children's Place, ripping toilet paper before sundown on Fridays after school and asking "neighbour Paul" to come over and adjust the thermostat on Saturdays. But I did. My weekdays searching for the meaning of "sexy" and "cool" on were bookended with weekends leading children's programming during Torah services and banging the Shabbos table to various Yiddish-y gibberish at my rabbi's home — the old faithful "ai ai — ai ai ai ai" a go-to. I'm an only child in a mixed-race family: my mother is white and of Jewish heritage, from Pointe-Claire, Que., while my father is African American from the South Shore neighbourhood of Chicago and whose childhood proximity to Judaism brought him to the religion as an adult. Together, they decided to upgrade their faith to Modern Orthodox when I was in elementary school, gifting me a ridiculous lifelong game of identity Mad Libs. Recently, I found myself back in a synagogue for the first time in I don't know how long, greeted at the door by a comically tiny woman with snow for hair and who couldn't help her ignorance. "Shabbat shalom," she says to my more obviously Jewish friend. "Welcome!" she says to me. "Jambo!" I think to myself. I am Cady Heron, a recent white U.S. immigrant from Hollywood's "country of Africa," trying to show solidarity with the Black students who look like home. I see family, and this woman sees "not from around these parts." An all too familiar consequence of this misunderstanding is my renewed subscription to the dissonance between my fractured sense of home in Blackness — shaped in part by estranged relationships with what's left of my Black American family, where, visually, it's assumed I belong — and the skepticism I face in the spaces I was nurtured to occupy. The succession of a synagogue service feels as natural to me as the blood in my veins and the curls on my head. But I am perpetually trapped on the subway, kitty-corner to a Hassid, locked into his tiny siddur — me, in a miniskirt and a going-out top on my way to Sweat Tour, with our shared language on the tip of my tongue. I choose to sit behind the glass where he can't see me even if he could. He would rather be at yeshiva, and I would rather be at Sweat Tour, but knowing this doesn't help the grief that once upon a time, we sat at the same Shabbos table. Much of this dissonance stems from attending Hebrew day school with 60 largely upper-middle-class white students — well, 59. I was the only [fill in the blank] in so many respects. Naturally, I was a bit of a pill, largely because each day brought an entirely new and creative test of my inclusion from students and teachers alike; the farewell tour of retired Roald Dahl-ian Catholic school teachers; a part-time real estate agent, part-time Hebrew teacher with children for enemies; a gang of eldest daughters losing faith in my prospects of being cool; a gang of eldest sons oscillating between wanting to destroy me and wanting to kiss me. I didn't look like a duck or swim like a duck and, although I could quack like one, I certainly was not a duck. Maybe a swan? "Yer a wizard, Harry." One of the nicer girls in my class always had her face buried in a book in the schoolyard at recess, probably for her own protection. Her tiny hands were engulfed by the biggest, chunkiest books I'd ever seen. I remember shaking off any of her good-natured attempts to deal me into what was obviously such a rich experience for her. But I couldn't afford to dip my toes into the dorky wonderland of Hogwarts or, eventually, Baby's First Erotica — Twilight. Knowing what was cool, whether or not I knew how to successfully participate in it, was my only chance at survival. Harry Potter was not cool and therefore not for me. I excluded myself so as not to give power to my own potential exclusion. Besides, I could always chalk it up to Judaism's general displeasure with sorcery and witchcraft. I can still hear my dad scolding, "Avodah Zarah." I later accepted her invitation to watch Doctor Who on her iPod Touch on the painful 12-hour van ride to Washington, D.C., for our Grade 8 grad trip. I never did watch the show again, but she was right to try to recruit me. It would take me another 14 years before I made my way to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters of my own accord. First, stumbling through a clumsy tug of war for my identity as I straddled The Secular and The Sacred at a time when Dov Charney's vision of spandex reigned supreme; prioritizing indie-electronic 8tracks playlists blasting Passion Pit or XXYYXX, or something worse, on my iPod Touch; practising how to correctly pronounce Bon Iver in case of a pop quiz from a boy with a banjo; and asking God why He didn't make me in the image of Effy Stonem from Skins (the Eve of Tumblr, if you ask me). This past November, in planning our upcoming lonely-children (read: nowhere else to go) Christmas Eve slumber party, a friend suggested we all watch Harry Potter while we make the yuletide gay. "I've actually never seen any of the Harry Potter movies," I said. (Or flipped through a single page.) And so it was decided. The group would slowly chip away at the wizarding world of Harry Potter,one Sunday at a time until Christmas. Eight weeks for eight movies. Perfect. Cracking open the door to a party I'm 20 years late to, where the host of the party has since taken the stage to reveal an exceptionally disappointing left (or, in this case, hard right) turn in her politics. I missed out on a lot of formative experiences as I constantly weighed the risks of what I could and couldn't afford to rebel against in my coming of age. The exclusion I felt staying home for Friday night Shabbat dinners instead of experiencing the "epic highs and lows of high school [parties]" was remedied by my secret self-guided study of Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious and America's Next Top Model. But what was lost in white-knuckling the little control I felt over my identity was worsened by sitting out on monoculture experiences that gave other people the spoons to feel seen and accepted in similar circumstances. Week after week, camped out on a loyal Ikea couch, the four of us unfurled the cozy and charming world of Hogwarts. I let the magic of Harry Potter wash over my virgin eyes, embracing my status as Slytherin, wondering what my Patronus would be, questioning the chemistry between Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley, searching Etsy for Dolores Umbridge's cat plates (she's an evil w*tch, but we, unfortunately, share a passion for the colour pink), noting the ridiculous frequency with which the Malfoy family must be booking bleach and tones, missing my girl Moaning Myrtle in the later films, hating Bellatrix Lestrange, and mourning Dobby. I realized, like me, Harry stood out like a sore thumb. He was handed a different mission in life than his peers, and the sooner he accepted it, the better. Embracing all the fractures and fissures on my peculiar path helped me access the precious arsenal of powers it had quietly provided. Harry, too, could have been crushed under the weight of the death of his parents and the enduring neglect of the Dursleys. But many North Stars were placed along his path, offering him a life preserver and a chance at coming into his own despite the challenging hand he was dealt. His power existed both in the acceptance of his destiny and the support of his best friends, Hermione and Ron; the mentorship of his teachers — Professor McGonagall, Dumbledore, Hagrid and even Snape; and the protection he received from Dobby, Fawkes and Mad-Eye. So many magical people (and creatures) stood firmly by him on his long and treacherous quest to destroy Voldemort. As I worked to untangle my labyrinth of tradition and rebellion, inclusion and exclusion, strength and vulnerability, so many people helped illuminate my path to blossoming into the person I wasn't sure I'd have the bravery to become. Much like Harry, the validation I was desperately seeking was closer than it seemed — just beyond the castle gates at Hogwarts. If only I'd known to enroll sooner.
