This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture where you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music (including of course Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of…
Culture
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Today’s Lesson: The Birds and the Bees
‘A growing number of middle-school students are sexually active,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, in his speech at the organization’s biennial General Assembly conference in Houston last November. “The simple truth is this: Our kids are frustrated by the combined failure of their parents and their synagogues to…
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ZOA Brings Civil-rights Education to Campus
In an effort to publicize recent findings by a federal civil-rights commission that anti-Zionism on college campuses is tantamount to antisemitism, a pro-Israel advocacy group is launching a nationwide public-education campaign to inform Jewish students of their rights. This fall, the Zionist Organization of America will dispatch representatives to university campuses across America — from…
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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…
The Latest
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Touro College Reaches Beyond the Jewish World
This fall, Touro College will open a new campus in Miami Beach and a new school of social work on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Such expansion has recently become routine for the traditionally Jewish university; in the past five years alone, Touro opened new campuses in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Berlin. Founded…
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ORT’s Nonsectarian Work Booms
When ORT opened a computer-learning center in Brooklyn last year, the focus was on Orthodox Jewish students, but, within a few weeks, non-Jewish kids from the neighborhood were asking to take part. Now the Jews and non-Jews work next to each other every Tuesday and Thursday after school. The computer lab is a representative example…
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Examining Day Schools, Author Finds Troubled Teachers
The Forward’s Gabriel Sanders recently caught up with Ingall to chat about her book, day-school life and the difficulties faced by today’s young teachers. *literal asterisks* *literal asterisks* *literal asterisks* Gabriel Sanders: How did you arrive at the title of your book? Carol Ingall: There was a very popular book written in the late ’60s…
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Traveling Teachers Save Schools Across the South
A dozen students will be confirmed next spring at B’nai Israel, a Conservative synagogue in Pensacola, Fla. While the occasion is cause for celebration, it is also cause for concern: When those students are confirmed, B’nai Israel’s Sunday school will lose nearly half its students, and the congregation will no longer be able to pay…
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Jews, Muslims Come Together on Rutgers Campus
On many college campuses, Jewish and Muslim students meet as adversaries, protesting events taking place in the Middle East, thousands of miles away. At Rutgers University Jewish and Muslim students are focusing on issues closer to home, and they are meeting as partners. The Human Development Project is a student club focused on bringing Jews…
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High School Seniors Open Interfaith Dialogue
During the last school year, seniors at the Abraham Joshua Heschel High School, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, met regularly with their counterparts at Al-Iman, an Islamic day school in Jamaica, Queens. Brought together by the Unity Program of Abraham’s Vision, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting dialogue between American Jews and Muslims, these students…
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Grant Helps Professor Tackle Adolescent Girls’ Issues
Certain topics of particular interest to adolescent girls go unaddressed in most classrooms, because they make many educators and students squirm: sex, gender, eating disorders, abusive relationships. Dr. Shira D. Epstein aims to change that situation. Epstein, an assistant professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education, has received a…
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Yeshiva University Undergrads Take a Broad View of Humanitarian Efforts
Last January, 14 students from Yeshiva University traveled to Honduras during their winter break. But they weren’t there to snorkel or sunbathe or swim in the Caribbean; they spent their “vacation” in a mountain village without heat, electricity or plumbing, building a school for a community of Evangelical Christians. The trip to Honduras, organized by…
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