Penny Schwartz
By Penny Schwartz
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Fast Forward The little-known Jewish origins of Boston’s annual Christmas tree tradition
BOSTON (JTA) – 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…
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Fast Forward Following high-profile antisemitic incidents, Massachusetts lawmakers vote to require genocide education in high schools
BOSTON (JTA) – Against a backdrop of disturbing revelations of antisemitic incidents, including many in local schools, Massachusetts lawmakers this week approved a bill that will require genocide education in all public secondary schools. “An Act Concerning Genocide Education,” which also establishes a public-private trust fund to support curriculum development and training for educators, is…
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Fast Forward ‘Fiddler’ meets ‘The Sopranos’: A gritty, forgotten novel by Sholom Aleichem is published in English for the first time
(JTA) — Move over, Tevye the dairyman. Make room for Moshkele the thief, the rough and tumble rogue hero from the wrong side of the shtetl in a newly rediscovered work of fiction by Sholom Aleichem. The recent publication of “Moshkele the Thief: A Rediscovered Novel” (Jewish Publication Society/University of Nebraska Press), translated from the…
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Fast Forward Boston Jews rally together after streak of attacks in the area
BOSTON (JTA) – Days after a series of violent acts stunned Greater Boston and threatened its Jewish community, residents are jolted but resolute, vowing to continue taking pride in their Jewish identity. The latest incident occurred on Thursday, when Chabad Rabbi Shlomo Noginski was stabbed eight times outside of Shaloh House, a Jewish school and…
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Fast Forward Bella Granek, 89, Holocaust survivor who was great with kids
(JTA) — Bella Granek had a magical touch with babies and young children. When her twin grandchildren were infants, she was often by her daughter’s side lending a hand in their care and knowing just how to get them to sleep. Granek’s many grandchildren delighted in their visits to her home in Lakewood, New Jersey,…
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News Bella Granek, 89, Holocaust Survivor Who Was Great With Kids
(JTA) — Bella Granek had a magical touch with babies and young children. When her twin grandchildren were infants, she was often by her daughter’s side lending a hand in their care and knowing just how to get them to sleep. Granek’s many grandchildren delighted in their visits to her home in Lakewood, New Jersey,…
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News Milton Steinberg, 96, Lover Of Cantorial Music
(JTA) — On the most solemn day of the Jewish calendar, the voice of Milton Steinberg rose to the heavens. For more than a decade Steinberg, a Holocaust survivor with a resonant voice and a lifelong passion for cantorial music, joined Cantor Shimon Craimer of the Riverdale Jewish Center during the recitation of the Avodah…
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News Marianne Steiner, 101, Stylish Holocaust Survivor Who Supported Research On German Jewry
(JTA) — As a young Jewish refugee in the late 1930s, Marianne Steiner brought creative flair to her job as a window dresser at Saks Fifth Avenue, the upscale department store in Manhattan. While her family was well off before fleeing Nazi Germany, their finances in New York were more limited. At the time, Steiner…
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Fast Forward Frank Gehry, renowned architect who began life as Frank Goldberg, dies at 96
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