The Anti-Defamation League released a report this week detailing what it calls the rise of rage in the United States. Who’s to blame for all this rage? That’s the fun part of the study: Abe Foxman & Co. finger Fox News host Glenn Beck, the “fearmonger-in-chief” and the “most important mainstream media figure … helping ...

Four thousand Chabad emissaries from across the country and around the world, known as shluchim, gathered last week for the group’s annual conference in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. While the shluchim were meeting, their sons had a camp-like gathering of their own. Organizers estimated that 577 boys, separated into age groups, took part. As they arrived ...

The Chabad Men’s Annual Kinus, a conference for Chabad’s emissaries from all over the world, began yesterday in Brooklyn. Everything is staying local this year, with the enormous final banquet set for Sunday night at the Bedford Armory, at the edge of Chabad’s home neighborhood, Crown Heights. (Last year’s banquet at Chelsea Piers apparently required ...

London-based photographer Frederic Aranda began taking pictures of Hasidim more or less by accident. While studying at Oxford and looking for a place to live, he stumbled across a house owned by a Lubavitcher rabbi. Aranda set up a studio in the house’s attic and started taking portraits of the rabbi’s family. Word spread and ...

This week’s Jewish Week notes that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg received three-quarters of the city’s Jewish vote in his surprisingly narrow third-term victory last week, representing a huge increase in his Jewish tally since his first reelection, in 2005, which the paper pegs at 53 percent. This means that “extensive spending on campaign offices ...

The U.S. State Department released this year’s installment of its annual International Religious Freedom Report this week. Here are some numbers from the section on Israel and the occupied territories:
Estimated percentage of country’s Jewish population born outside the country: 30
Approximate number of Messianic Jews living in the country: 10,000
Immigration applications by Messianic Jews blocked by ...

Israel is hogging clean drinking water, providing settlers with almost unlimited supplies while providing insufficient amounts to Palestinians, according to an Amnesty International report released yesterday. The report says that most Palestinians don’t have enough water for the level of per-person daily use recommended by the World Health Organization. Israel’s Water Authority disputes the charges, ...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week came up with a new gambit to bolster Israel’s reputation in the wake of the controversial Goldstone report, which charges that both the IDF and Hamas may have committed war crimes during last winter’s Gaza war. Netanyahu wants to change the rules of war. At a meeting of ...

Eighth graders at Florida’s Bethany Christian School, which promises “academic excellence in a Christ-centered environment,” traded their iPods and cell phones for potatoes, bread, and carrots in an attempt to turn their classroom into Anne Frank’s attic for a strangely ascetic sleepover over the weekend, according to a report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Save ...

Neil Diamond, sometimes dubbed the “Jewish Elvis,” is back in the spotlight this week with an upcoming Christmas album and a new book, Neil Diamond is Forever by Jon Bream, who debated the star’s merits with humorist Dave Barry on WNYC yesterday. They focused on the seemingly age-old question: Why hasn’t Diamond been inducted into ...