By Gabrielle Birkner
As early immigrants to what is now Israel were learning how to communicate in a revived ancient language, the hard-of-hearing among them were creating a new language altogether. Combining signs from most all of the different countries from which the Jewish populations emigrated, Israeli Sign Language began to take shape in the 1930s. Around the same time, in a small village in Israel’s Negev Desert, another sign language was forming — one that did not grow out of older, existing sign languages, but arose, organically, out of the need to communicate with four deaf children born into one Bedouin family.
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By Nathan Jeffay
It had to be one of the most moving reality TV moments. On September 4, seconds before 18-year-old Holon resident Diana Golbi was crowned winner of “
Kokhav Nolad,” Israel’s version of “American Idol,” program makers revealed how she had started on the road to national stardom.
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By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
Jews make more donations than people of other religions to “basic needs” causes, which are those that focus on food, shelter and other fundamental necessities, according to a recent study comparing philanthropic patterns among Americans of different faiths.
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For the past 15 years, Sasha Chanoff has worked in refugee rescue, relief and resettlement operations in Africa and the United States. In 2004, he founded Mapendo International, a humanitarian organization that rescues and protects refugees in Africa who live in peril in war-torn communities. Despite the urgent needs of these people, in the past decade more than 200,000 slots for resettlement to the United States have gone unfilled. Mapendo International fills this gap by enabling the most vulnerable people to permanently relocate to countries where they can rebuild their lives safely and eventually attain citizenship.
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By Renee Ghert-Zand
Clean-tech entrepreneur and Jewish philanthropist Gary Kremen walked through his home in Los Altos Hills, Calif., on a recent afternoon. He held his 5-month-old son, Isaac, in one arm and gestured with the other arm to the environmentally friendly baby paraphernalia.
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By Dorothy Lipovenko
The buffet dinner hummed with a festive air: plates of fragrant chicken; amiable chatter; little gifts of scented soap and candles, opened with unrestrained glee.
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The Jewish community is full of big ideas to foster Jewish culture and community online. Now, finding money to bring those innovations to life is about to get a little easier. Three major players on the Jewish philanthropic scene — the Jim Joseph Foundation, the Righteous Persons Foundation and The Charles & Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation — have pooled resources to create the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund. In this inaugural year, the philanthropies are making available $500,000 to finance a range of digital media projects.Read More
By Gary Shapiro
Call it two degrees of separation. Jews with connections to the state of Maine journeyed in September to a lakefront home in Westchester County, N.Y. They came from around New York to meet and reminisce about this most northeasterly state.
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By Howard Shapiro
For Andrea Engel, giving to charity and volunteering for charity work — two basic facets of
tzedakah — came as second nature. As a high school student in Birmingham, Ala., she headed her B’nai B’rith Youth Organization fundraising effort. As a Northwestern University undergraduate in suburban Chicago, she served on the executive board for the university’s huge marathon fundraiser and raised money for the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago.
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When Hank Greenberg Met Jackie Robinson
Reconsider Decision on Rabbis and Intermarriage
Ultra-Orthodox Men Ditch All-Black Attire as Fashion Trumps Tradition
Is Steven Hawking’s Decision To Boycott an Israeli Conference Boon to BDS?
Claims Conference Blames Dead Official for Fraud Snafu
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