Harvard Law Professor, a Founding Member of Think Tank That Drove Gun Control in Brazil, On Leave After Firing Pellet Gun Near Synagogue During Yom Kippur

Harvard Law School describes visiting professor Carlos Portugal Goueva as a "human rights activist" who founded a Brazilian think tank that "led the largest anti-violence campaign in the country, resulting in the enactment of the federal Gun Control Act of 2003." He's now on administrative leave from the Ivy League institution after he was arrested for firing a pellet gun near a Massachusetts synagogue on Yom Kippur. 

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Syracuse Students Charged With Hate Crime for 'Abhorrent' Rosh Hashanah Attack on Jewish Fraternity

Two Syracuse University students are facing hate crime charges for throwing a bag of pork into a Jewish fraternity house during a Rosh Hashanah gathering.

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NYT Says Palestinian Author ‘Canceled’ Over Jewish ‘Concerns’—Without Noting Her Praise for Oct 7 as an ‘Indigenous Uprising’

When the New York Times reported a Palestinian author’s New Jersey book launch event was canceled over the Jewish community’s "concerns," it omitted a key detail: The concerns stemmed from the author’s praise for Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre and anti-Semitic social media posts.

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Arsonist Targeted Josh Shapiro's Home Over Governor's Support for Israel, Police Say

The suspect in the Sunday arson attack on Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro's (D.) residence said he set fire to the home because Shapiro is Jewish and supports Israel, according to a newly unsealed warrant.

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Northwestern Vandals Spray-Paint Hamas Triangles, 'Intifada Now' on Campus Building Housing Holocaust Center

Anti-Semitic vandals used red paint to write "Death to Israel" and draw Hamas triangles on a Northwestern University building that houses the school's Holocaust center as Jewish students observe Passover.

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A Tale of Two Abrahams

Along comes Anthony Julius, offering his own modern midrash on the first Jew in history, Abraham. Julius's Abraham is a literary creation bound by neither fealty to traditional faith nor scholarly convention. The work, the author writes in the preface, presents "neither a historical nor an antihistorical account of Abraham," nor is it an account "written within the rabbinic imagination," i.e., it is not placing itself within the 2,000-year-old traditional Jewish interpretive history of the character. "When it is written [in the Bible] that God speaks to Abraham, I take it to refer to Abraham's inner conviction that he is in communication with God," writes the author. Julius's account is a mash-up of "philosophical argument and storytelling," a reimagining of a Freud-citing patriarch.

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Harvard, Columbia Plunge in Law School Rankings Amid Anti-Semitism Backlash

Harvard and Columbia Law Schools both plummeted in the 2025 U.S. News ranking amid ongoing controversies over campus anti-Semitism, while Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas at Austin joined the prestigious "T14" list.

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Weekend Beacon 3/30/25

As peace remains elusive in Ukraine, it's worth reflecting on a time when the region was similarly witness to carnage—but with the Russians fighting the British, French, Turks, and... Sardinians?

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Weekend Beacon 3/9/25

The Lenten season has begun, which for Catholics is a time of prayer, fasting, and abstinence. A friend suggested I give up alcohol for Lent. And maybe I can give up breathing too. I jest—people have given up far more and for a lot longer. 

Which brings me to Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik, who reviews Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig by Jordan D. Rosenblum.

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Cal Poly Told Jewish Students To 'Hide Their Jewish Identity' To Avoid Anti-Semitic Harassment, Federal Complaint Says

After Jewish students at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, were taunted with anti-Semitic slurs and pelted with fake blood, administrators encouraged them to "hide their Jewish identity to avoid being targeted," according to a federal civil rights complaint filed against the school on Thursday.

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