WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Orthodox Union expressed confidence in President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, and called for an “expeditious” confirmation, an exceptional statement spurred by concerns about rising extremist violence and anti-Semitism.

(JTA) — Hackers shut down an Atlanta synagogue’s live stream of Senator-Elect Raphael Warnock delivering a sermon to honor Martin Luther King, whose church he leads.

(JTA) — As the videos of George Floyd’s killing galvanized a historic wave of racial justice protests this past summer, the staff of one of the country’s leading organizations promoting Jews of color knew they had to make a big change.

(JTA) — The sweatshirt, spotted amid the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol, seemed designed to provoke fear. 

JTA) — They warned us. And warned us. And warned us.

(JTA) — AIPAC hardly ever pronounces on any issue that does not relate to Israel. It’s also loath to criticize a sitting president.

(JTA) — Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel made the news Wednesday morning when Raphael Warnock, the Democrat who won one of two Georgia Senate elections Tuesday, invoked the rabbi during an interview on CNN.“I think Abraham Joshua Heschel, the rabbi who said, when he marched with Dr. King, he fel…

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat running for Senate in Georgia, said Tuesday that he had an “increasing recognition” of the danger that Hamas poses to Israel since his harsh criticisms of Israel in a 2018 sermon at his church.

(JTA) — In his 28 years at the CIA, Darrell Blocker figured out a reliable strategy for recruiting covert agents.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Some of  Rabbi Levi Shemtov’s most prominent congregants are likely to leave his synagogue soon, but the Washington, D.C., rabbi isn’t sweating it.

DALLAS (JTA) — Most will be virtual, some will take place as part of tightly regulated events — but there will be menorah lightings and more Hanukkah festivities this year in Texas, despite the coronavirus pandemic. 

Since astronaut Jessica Meir returned to Earth in April from the International Space Station, she — like all of us — has spent a lot of time indoors and cooped up.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The simmering fear among Middle East watchers that President Donald Trump might attack Iran in the waning days of his presidency was inflamed on Friday when assassins shot to death the man believed to be responsible for Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President-elect Joe Biden announced the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas, a Latino Jew who has emphasized the heightened threat facing American Jews, as his Homeland Security secretary on Monday.

(JTA) — President-elect Joe Biden announced on Thursday that he has made his pick for treasury secretary and that he’ll announce the choice around Thanksgiving. He added that he thinks the pick will be “accepted by all elements of the Democratic Party,” from the “progressive to the moderate …

JTA) — In the days after the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history, Pittsburgh became a symbol of the enduring dangers of hatred, as well as the Jewish communal solidarity that followed the synagogue shooting.

(JTA) — President-elect Joe Biden made his first key appointment on Wednesday night by choosing Ron Klain, a close confidant and veteran Washington insider who is open about his Jewish identity, to be his White House chief of staff.

(JTA) — One of the leaders of the Proud Boys, the far-right group that President Donald Trump told to “stand back and stand by” during a presidential debate, is trying to rebrand the organization as explicitly white supremacist and anti-Semitic.

(JTA) — Leading up to Election Day, security specialists feared violence in the streets, car rammings at polling places and perhaps even vigilante killings amid dueling mass protests.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Major media have called the presidency for Joe Biden, citing what they say is his insurmountable lead in votes counted in Pennsylvania.

(JTA) — I’m writing this just as the Pennsylvania secretary of state announced that the bulk of ballot counting may be done by the end of Thursday. If trends continue, Joe Biden could be president-elect by the time you see this.

(JTA) — Jon Ossoff, the Jewish Georgia Democrat running for the US Senate, gets another chance to unseat Republican incumbent Sen. David Perdue in a runoff.

PITTSBURGH (JTA) — American Jews woke up on Wednesday to a presidential election that is extending their anxiety and to electoral maps that show a Republican Party changed by a president they repudiated with their votes.

(JTA) — A judge in Georgia dismissed a lawsuit by the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who appears in “Borat 2.”

(JTA) — The late Jewish Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is getting her own statue in her native Brooklyn.

(JTA) — The latest political candidate to condemn George Soros, the Jewish billionaire Democratic megadonor, is Jewish himself.

(JTA) — Louise Gluck, the American granddaughter of Hungarian Jews, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.

This article originally appeared in Kveller.

(JTA) — A Melbourne, Australia, pilot took to the skies with three chickens Sunday to carry out a pre-Yom Kippur ritual that was otherwise off limits for that city’s locked-down Jews.

JTA) — The Jewish Advocate, a 118-year-old newspaper in Boston founded by Theodor Herzl, is the latest victim of the coronavirus crisis.

(JTA) — Israel has signed diplomatic agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, two of its Arab neighbors, and the word “historic” has been used a lot. 

WASHINGTON (JTA) — As she made history during her illustrious life, Ruth Bader Ginsburg will do so upon her passing: She will become the first Jew to lie in state at the Capitol building, and the first woman, Jewish or non.

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first Jewish woman to serve on the Supreme Court and a tireless advocate for gender equality, has died at 87.

A Jewish actress who has been playing a key role in “Fiddler on the Roof, ” has been dismissed from the award-winning musical after absenting herself on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, it was learned today. The actress is Ann Marisse, in private life the wife of Rabbi Herbert Freed. She is also…

(JTA) — Scott Wiener, a California state senator, has been barraged with anti-Semitic attacks online, including one falsely accusing him of promoting “Jewish pedophilia.”

(JTA) — February was hours away from ending when Russ Agdern stood at the center of the room at a Jewish retreat center in Maryland, singing with all of the spirit he could muster.

(JTA) — Israel signed peace treaties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain at the White House on Tuesday, with President Donald Trump calling the moment the “dawn of a new Middle East.”

(JTA) — Nina Shapiro didn’t intend for the video of her son’s singing to go viral. The Perth, Australia, mother of two describes herself as “paranoid about my kids being on social media.”

(JTA) — One morning last week, Henry Rosenthal got in his van and headed north from his home in Washington state toward Canada.

(JTA) — Hundreds of synagogues have been shuttered for months. Jewish organizations are slashing budgets and staff. Jewish community centers, saddled with empty gyms and child care centers, have laid off masses of employees.

(JTA) — Some 20,000 people lined the streets of Jerusalem calling for Benjamin Netanyahu’s resignation on Saturday night, in the largest gathering outside the Israeli prime minister’s official residence in 10 weeks of protests.

(JTA) — Last week, a researcher who focuses on extremism said he was concerned that the fatal shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, could start a trend of similar deadly incidents at protests.

(JTA) — Israeli firefighters arrived in Sacramento, California, to assist with battling a wave of wildfires sweeping through the area.

(JTA) — Arson was the cause of a fire at the Chabad center at the University of Delaware, the state’s fire marshal has ruled.

(JTA) — A sign with the phrase “The Jews Want A Race War” was hung from the heavily trafficked Los Angeles interstate 405 highway overpass on Saturday.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Two Jewish political communities, Republicans and Democrats, met separately and disagreed on just about everything but this: Jews in Florida could decide this election.

(JTA) — It’s official: Kamala Harris is Joe Biden’s choice for vice president.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jewish groups are taking aim at President Donald Trump’s pick for ambassador to Germany for his past statements about Muslim immigrants and for downplaying the importance of Nazi history.The nomination of Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran who now frequently app…

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Jamie Raskin’s warning to top Jewish Democratic leaders was stark: The war that President Donald Trump and Republicans have declared on the U.S. Post Office is a threat to American democracy.