Melissa Hoffman is the Humane Education and Program Specialist at the Jewish Initiative for Animals.
Melissa Hoffman
By Melissa Hoffman
-
Community How are we going to eat together again?
As reopening communal life grows tantalizingly close in many parts of the U.S., Jewish institutions are considering the best ways to resume in-person activity. To reduce the risk of suffering through a similar catastrophe again any time soon, the aspect of gathering that many have missed most, and that will inevitably grace our spaces once…
-
Community Burning Poultry Poop Will Not Solve Climate Change
On November 20, JTA published a piece highlighting an Israeli research group’s findings that burning the excrement produced by turkey and other poultry could be a “greener” alternative to coal power. But burning poultry excrement to combat climate change is a load of chicken poop. To fight climate change and protect our environment, we have…
-
Community Ritual Slaughter Bans Don’t Help Animals — They Target Jews and Muslims
Many worry that a new proposal to ban ritual slaughter in the Belgian region of Flanders is yet another attempt to mask anti-Semitism and Islamophobia with a disingenuous argument for animal welfare — and they’re right to be concerned. The draft law requires pre-slaughter electrical stunning of sheep and poultry. This proposed bans violate kosher…
-
Community We Need to Talk About Kapparot
It’s 5777, and it’s time to change the conversation about Kapparot. Next week, in the day or two before we observe Yom Kippur, we’ll hear about or participate in the long-standing Jewish folk tradition that attracts explosive debate over its use of live chickens: Kapparot, or Kapporos, a ritual practiced by some Jews in which…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News Scoop: Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors
- 2
Fast Forward Their Pacific Palisades synagogue is standing, but all three rabbis lost their homes
- 3
News ‘Do you have the Torahs?’ Synagogue races LA wildfire to rescue its past and future
- 4
Opinion Why is Netanyahu poised to OK a ceasefire that’s favorable to Hamas? One word: Trump
In Case You Missed It
-
News Lipstadt has ‘hope’ Trump team will build on her antisemitism work
-
Fast Forward A lost film about Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side returns to the big screen in NYC
-
Opinion ‘The rabbis did disaster pretty well’: Amid wildfires, LA Jews cope with regret — and rancor
-
Fast Forward Javier Milei, Argentina’s pro-Israel president, is first non-Jew to win ‘Jewish Nobel’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
