K. Shelley Special to the Journal The entire state of Montana has a Jewish population of only about 6,000, a number that matches the total population – Jews, Christians and everybody else – of the small town of Whitefish, Montana. Yet somehow, Whitefish, home to about 100 Jewish families, has become the focus of neo-Nazis Read More

Penny Schwartz Special to the Journal Jewish Community Centers in Marblehead and Newton, along with other Jewish institutions across New England, were on alert Monday after a series of fake bomb threats were phoned in to sixteen JCCs across the country and two in England. The threats were described by one security official as unprecedented Read More

Susan Britt Special to the Journal Middleton Police Chief James DiGianvittorio always dreamed of becoming a police officer, but he never expected counter-terrorism to be such a high priority policing issue. In response to visiting a Kibbutz not far from the Gaza Strip during his recent Counter Terrorism Training in Israel, DiGianvittorio expressed surprise over Read More

Todd Feinburg Journal Publisher/Editor It was a short-lived storm that erupted last week when reports of knives on sale at a store called Freaky Elegant in Salem reached Jeff Cohen, chairman of the city’s No Place For Hate committee. The concern? The knives included swastikas. Cohen went into the store to see if the story Read More

Jules Becker Special to the Journal James Cagney spoke Yiddish fluently. The great Irish-American actor actually learned it while growing up on New York’s East Side and notably employed the Mamaloshen in advising a Jewish immigrant looking for his dentist brother  in the 1932 film “Taxi.’’ In fact, Cagney conversed in Yiddish with the likes Read More