Ron Kampeas
By Ron Kampeas
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Fast Forward Esther Bejarano, member of Auschwitz orchestra, dies at 96
(JTA) — Esther Bejarano played music while she watched fellow Jews marched to their deaths, and then used it decades later to make sure the crimes she suffered and witnessed would never be repeated. Bejarano, a member of the so-called Auschwitz orchestra, died peacefully Saturday at the Jewish hospital in Hamburg. She was 96. On…
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Fast Forward Biden taps Eric Garcetti to be envoy to India
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden nominated Los Angeles’ Jewish mayor, Eric Garcetti, to be his ambassador to India. The White House in announcing the nomination on Friday emphasized Garcetti’s bona fides in leading an international city. “As mayor, Garcetti oversees the busiest container port in the Western Hemisphere, the largest municipal utility in the…
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Fast Forward Less than 3 years after Tree of Life shooting, GOP-led Pennsylvania legislature eliminates nonprofit security funding
(JTA) — The Orthodox Union blasted Pennsylvania Republican-led Pennsylvania legislature for cutting security funding for nonprofits to zero. The General Assembly budget passed last month effectively ended a five-year fund the state established in 2019, just after the Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh, to secure nonprofits. The fund has so far distributed $10 million…
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Fast Forward US Jews getting younger on average, massive religions survey finds
(JTA) — The median age of American Jews has dropped from 52 to 48 since 2013, according to a massive survey of Americans and religion, making Jews one of only two religious groups to grow younger on average. Every other religious grouping except for mainline Protestants tended to age during the same period, although a…
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Fast Forward Marjorie Taylor Greene invokes Nazi-era comparison in decrying vaccination outreach
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Just weeks after touring the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and apologizing for using Nazi analogies, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likened vaccination outreach to Nazi-era thugs. “Biden pushing a vaccine that is NOT FDA approved shows covid is a political tool used to control people,” Greene, a Georgia Republican, tweeted on Tuesday. “People…
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Fast Forward England’s Chelsea soccer club joins Anti-Defamation League in partnership to fight bigotry
(JTA) — The famed London-based Chelsea Football Club and the Anti-Defamation League have joined in a partnership to combat bigotry. For the next three years, Chelsea’s foundation will fund the expansion of the ADL’s Center on Extremism — which feeds information on extremist activity to law enforcement — and the ADL’s work with a British…
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News ‘A veritable sigh of relief’: How the world’s Jewish community came together to bring aid to Surfside
SURFSIDE, Fla. (JTA) — “I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew,” Steve Eisenberg tells me. We’re standing in The Shul of Bal Harbour on Sunday, in its social hall under construction. Two days earlier, on Friday evening just before Shabbat, it was piled high with blankets, clothing, mattresses, food and toiletries for the…
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News Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava is a source of pride for local Jews under haunting circumstances
SURFSIDE, Fla. (JTA) — Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava speaks fluent English and what she calls passable Spanish, but some of her constituents use a Yiddish word to describe her. “She’s heimishe,” said Jacob Solomon, the longtime president of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, using the Yiddish word for homey and reassuring. “And she’s…
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