When Faiqa Cheema and Jeff Beale were planning their September 2021 wedding, it was important to Cheema that it include elements of the traditional ceremony of her Muslim faith, while also being meaningful for her husband, who was raised Baptist.

The couple’s path to their dream interfaith wedding turned out to be more complicated than they expected. While such unions are increasingly common, Muslim clergy have long frowned on marrying outside Islam, and Cheema and Beale struggled to find an imam who would officiate, much less adapt the Islamic ceremony, known as a nikah, to...

Over 100 Buddhist leaders have signed an open letter addressing antisemitism following the January 15 synagogue attack at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, in which a gunman held four people hostage for 10 hours. Penned by Zen teacher Koshin Paley Ellison of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, the letter was shared via Google Doc for Buddhist leaders to sign.

A Virginia state senator is facing a wave of backlash from American Muslim and Jewish groups after she criticised the Muslim face veil when making an argument against mask mandates.

Amanda Chase, who has been a member of the Virginia Senate since 2016, has faced several accusations by Democrats of downplaying the coronavirus pandemic since the Biden administration introduced mask mandates last year.

In a Facebook post on her personal page, Chase...

Although Louisiana schools desegregated right before Charles Lee Bilberry’s senior year in 1969, he was not allowed to attend his graduation ceremony, he said, because “the white parents didn’t want their children to graduate with colored children.”

Bilberry collected his diploma from the principal’s office and soon moved to Southern Nevada. He recalled his mother’s hug and kiss on the cheek when she told him, “Son, when you go to Las Vegas, be the best that you can be.”

He spoke of the moment Sunday afternoon during an Interfaith Service at Second Baptist Church in...

A man held hostages for more than 10 hours Saturday at a Texas synagogue where he could be heard ranting in a livestream and demanding the release of a Pakistani neuroscientist who was convicted of trying to kill U.S. Army officers in Afghanistan.

One of the four hostages held at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville was released during the standoff; three others were rescued when authorities entered the building about 9 p.m., authorities said. The hostage taker was killed and FBI Special Agent in Charge Matt DeSarno said a team would investigate “the shooting incident.”...

A Neo-Nazi leader convicted in a plot to intimidate Jews and journalists has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

The man, Kaleb Cole, 25, the former leader of the Neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, was convicted in September of conspiracy, mailing threatening communications and interfering with a federally protected activity, the Justice Department ...

On a Sunday morning in early December, Austin resident Charles Kaufman received a small plastic bag containing some rocks and a folded document on his doorstep, a few feet away from the bundled-up newspaper usually delivered. The document was a flyer blaming Jews for the new surge of COVID-19, the same one that hundreds of homes across the country received over the past month.

“Maybe 100 or so people received it on my street, Jewish and non-Jewish,” Kaufman told The Media Line on Monday. “I was very familiar with that characterization and very well aware of it long before this...

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday recounted being evacuated from the Senate chamber during the Jan. 6 attack, including a close brush with rioters who he was told made antisemitic remarks about him.

"I was within 30 feet of these nasty, racist, bigoted insurrectionists. Had someone had a gun, had two of them blocked off the door, who knows what would have happened. I was told later that one of them reportedly said, 'There's the big Jew. Let's get him,' " Schumer said...

It's a Sunday afternoon in Fort Worth, Texas, and a flock of young people wander into a bar to kick back a few beers, sway to live music and mingle.

And then, they recite the Lord's Prayer.

It's quite a departure from traditional services, which have driven so many away from church in recent years. There's no confession, no fire and brimstone, and nobody's wearing their Sunday best.

Source:...

When Westminster United Methodist Church in Houston resumed in-person services late last year, after a seven-month halt due to COVID-19, there were Sundays when only three worshippers showed up, according to the pastor, Meredith Mills.

Since then, attendance has inched back up, but it’s still only about half the pre-pandemic turnout of 160 or 170, Mills estimates.

“It’s frustrating,” she said. “People just seem to want to leave home less these days.”

Source:...

On an unseasonably warm December night earlier this month, some 12,000 people flocked to Boston Common for the lighting of the city’s official Christmas tree: a majestic, 48-foot white spruce. 

The event marked the 50th straight year that the people of Nova Scotia supplied Boston’s tree — a tribute to how the city, led by a prominent Jewish businessman, supported the Canadian province at a time of crisis.

At the Dec. 2 festivities, recently sworn-in Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who also took part in three public menorah lightings that week, was joined by Nova...

Three months after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, prompting hundreds of thousands to evacuate the country, Catholic Charities and its Jewish community partners have helped dozens of Afghan immigrants to find homes and begin new lives in the Greater Boston Area.

In a webinar held on Nov. 22, titled "Together We Respond," representatives of Catholic Charities of Boston (CCAB), Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP), and the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) shared updates about how they have served people arriving from Afghanistan over the past few months. They expressed...

In the 14 June 1939 edition of the New York Post, Hy Turkin wrote a story on Morris Arnovich, the Philadelphia Phillies left fielder leading the National League with a .398 batting average. Morris was “chock full of hustle,” Turkin wrote, and a “sure bet” to make that season’s All-Star team. Then, in the fifth paragraph, Turkin made reference to Arnovich’s religion: “Jewish,” Turkin wrote, plainly. “Orthodox.”

Even if Arnovich, commonly referred to as the “Son of Israel” during...