Jeri Zeder
By Jeri Zeder
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Culture Congregational Schools Focus on Teacher Training
Leaders in Jewish education agree that it’s time to focus more on the quality of congregational Hebrew schools — and a critical piece of that is teaching the teachers how to teach. Professional development, they say, must go beyond one-shot workshops and become an ongoing, on-site, in-depth exploration of technique, skill and Jewish content. Some…
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News Old Songs Reach New Audiences — Online
Imagine a tenement kitchen, circa 1890. A mother lifts her howling baby, his tiny hands knotted in fists, legs pounding the air. She cradles his head against her shoulder, and begins swaying rhythmically. While the child melts into sleepy silence, she sings a popular lullaby: “Rozhinkes mit Mandlen” (“Raisins and Almonds”). It’s been decades since…
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News Erecting Foundations For Those With Special Needs
Esther Greenspan has survived a motor disability that interfered with her ability to nurse, 10 broken bones in her first 10 years of life, asthma attacks, scoliosis that required surgical treatment and illnesses that her body has trouble shaking off because her immune system is weak. She’s now 19. In the winter of 2005, her…
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Culture Catholic Colleges Give Jewish Programs a Lift
A cross balances atop the spire of Lyons Hall on Boston College’s campus. But a hint of a Jewish presence — a small Israeli flag — is visible through one window of the Gothic-influenced building. That’s the office of Maxim Shrayer, chair of the Slavic and Eastern languages department — which is also the home…
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Culture Catholic Colleges Give Jewish Programs a Lift
A cross balances atop the spire of Lyons Hall on Boston College’s campus. But a hint of a Jewish presence — a small Israeli flag — is visible through one window of the Gothic-influenced building. That’s the office of Maxim Shrayer, chair of the Slavic and Eastern languages department — which is also the home…
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News Retrieving the Past, One Tombstone at a Time
It’s hard enough to distinguish Hebrew letters on a weathered old gravestone — all those hays that might be chets, the vavs resembling zayins and the dalets long melted into reshes. It’s even harder when the gravestone is on the other side of the world and all you have to go on is a digital…
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News Needlework Circle Knits Together Women of All Stripes
Before stretching squares of batting and fabric through her wooden quilting hoop, Miriam K. Sokoloff loads a needle with rose-colored thread and twists a knot on the end. She reaches across Judith Solomont, who is busy reducing old blue jeans to denim disks the size of dinner plates, and hands the needle to Reva Katz,…
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
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Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
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Culture An Israeli genocide scholar looks to Israel’s history to understand ‘what went wrong’
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News Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s selection as JTS commencement speaker roils graduating class
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News Remembering Abe Foxman, the longtime ADL leader known as the ‘Jewish pope,’ who always answered my calls
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Fast Forward Michael Jackson biopic revives legend of Jewish music mogul who battled MTV’s ‘color barrier’
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Fast Forward DOGE’s cuts to Jewish humanities grants were unconstitutional, judge rules
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Fast Forward As anti-LGBTQ laws spread, these two Jewish nonprofits are funding moves to safer states