American history

Escape artist Harry Houdini is shown before being lowered in a packing crate into the ice-covered Detroit River in 1907. (AP Photo)

June 22, 2018, 2:07 am

How Harry Houdini stayed chained to his roots as a rabbi’s son

A Maryland exhibit opening June 24 highlights the life and mysterious death of the world famous escape artist, born in Hungary as Erik Weisz

By Rich Tenorio

The Ohabei Shalom Cemetery with its burial chapel in East Boston, Massachusetts, on June 10, 2018 (Matt Lebovic/The Times of Israel)

June 20, 2018, 10:55 pm

Immigrant center planned in the grounds of Boston’s oldest Jewish cemetery

Inside a converted burial chapel, the city's newest and most vulnerable residents will access citizenship resources alongside content on East Boston's Jewish past

By Matt Lebovic

Bertha Reynolds, born Bertha Hurwitz in Poland, served as a White House secretary in the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations. (Courtesy of Shirley Thaler/via JTA)

May 3, 2018, 2:58 am

Recalling Aunt Bertie, the longest-serving Jewish staffer in White House history

An old suitcase schlepped down from the attic turns out to contain a trove of historical American treasures from a woman who, in a hostile-to-Hebrews world, worked with giants

By Steve North

September 10, 2017, 3:37 pm

Renewal in Boston’s North End

A city old enough to have a rich history beneath its present day exterior, and young enough to be forever becoming

By Rachel Sharansky Danziger

September 6, 2017, 12:40 pm

Rescinding DACA and Jewish history

The Dreamers' fate will indicate how dark America's immediate discriminatory path

By Jack Schwartz

August 25, 2017, 1:14 pm

Trump a hero of Jewish history?

The president can transform his legacy by using his exclusive power to change US policy on Jerusalem's status

By Nathan Lewin

Rabbi Darren Levine leading a youth service at Tamid Downtown Synagogue in New York. (Courtesy)

June 2, 2017, 5:52 am

Basketball dads help Manhattan Jewish congregation score historic church space

A chance courtside meeting is a slam dunk for interfaith cooperation as Trinity Church shares its 250-year-old chapel with Tamid Downtown Synagogue

By Cathryn J. Prince

Paul Simon, left, with partner Art Garfunkel in 1964. (Don Hunstein)

April 28, 2017, 2:27 pm

Here’s to you, Mr. Simon — homage to Jewish pop legend opens in LA

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame exhibit focuses on celebrated songwriter's cultural and social impact -- the ‘Graceland’ chapter, the TV and movies, the trailblazing collaborations

By Alex Suskind

Ben Franklin's proposed design for the Great Seal of the United States included Moses parting the Red Sea. (Public domain)

April 16, 2017, 12:06 pm

When Moses almost parted the Red Sea on the Great Seal of the United States

New book contends Hebrew prophets influenced the Puritans who established America -- and the patriots who led it to independence

By Rich Tenorio

The fall of Adam and Eve as depicted in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo (Wikipedia / Public Domain)

April 15, 2017, 2:49 am

On journey to Eden, Bruce Feiler discovers the Creation of Man is really an egalitarian tale

Investigating how the biblical story was 'weaponized' to subjugate women, bestselling author travels to Iraq, the Vatican... and through history

By Rich Tenorio

Janice Rothschild Blumberg remembers when her Atlanta synagogue was bombed in 1958 by white supremacists and sees the same hatred still festering. (Bill Rothschild)

March 25, 2017, 5:18 am

60 years after synagogue bombing, an Atlanta rebbetzin remembers her friends Martin and Coretta

Spate of threats against JCCs eerily reminded Janice Rothschild Blumberg of when her temple was targeted during the civil rights movement

By Ben Sales

Orville (L), Katharine and Wilbur Wright, 1909. (Photo: Bain Collection/Library of Congress)

March 15, 2017, 12:58 am

Writer to right passage on Wright’s wrong

Famed historian David McCullough is quick to amend an excerpt describing anti-Semitic remarks by sister of fathers of flight

By Marshall Weiss

An inset of the autobiographical manuscripts of Luis de Carvajal the Younger, circa 1595, with devotional manuscripts. (Courtesy of the Government of Mexico)

December 18, 2016, 11:42 pm

Lost diary of tortured Mexican ‘converso’ features in early-American Jewish exhibit

Manuscript by Luis de Carvajal was missing for 75 years until spotted by a keen-eyed collector. Now it joins others on display at the New-York Historical Society

By Penny Schwartz

Jessica Steinberg reads 'Not This Turkey' to her kids. (Courtesy Jessica Steinberg)

November 7, 2016, 2:49 pm

Gobble up this real-life Jewish Thanksgiving story

In her debut children's book, Times of Israel writer Jessica Steinberg celebrates identity, diversity and the immigrant experience through the lens of one of America's most beloved holidays

By Penny Schwartz

A bronze statue of the Satanic icon Baphomet, currently residing in a shed outside The Satanic Temple in Salem, Massachusetts (Courtesy)

October 26, 2016, 4:36 pm

In haunted Salem, a Jewish church founder preaches the art of ‘Satanic’ social change

At a former funeral home in a town inextricably linked to witchcraft, secular Jew Malcolm Jarry opens a new heaquarters for his Satanic Temple, a controversial movement with up to 50,000 members worldwide

By Matt Lebovic