OSWIECIM, Poland — A crew of Polish archeologists searching for a buried treasure at the former site of the Great Synagogue here struck gold Monday when they discovered a trove of artifacts, including three synagogue menorahs, a Chanukah menorah, the eternal light and several synagogue chandeliers. The diggers were acting on evidence — unearthed in…
Responding to a groundswell of requests from aging Jewish Holocaust survivors, the organization responsible for securing support for survivors is putting an increasing emphasis on winning funding for home health care. In the first step of this effort, last month the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany concluded its first agreement with the German…
A Jewish community school in Margate, N.J., is alleging that it is being systematically and purposefully destroyed by what at first glance seems an unlikely candidate: the local Jewish federation. What began as a dispute over Trocki Hebrew Academy’s financial management has escalated into an all-out community war, with a defamation lawsuit by the school’s…
Bush Awards Podhoretz, Lauder President Bush has awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, to Norman Podhoretz, the Jewish political theorist. Podhoretz helped cultivate neoconservatism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and has since steered its flagship publication, the American Jewish Committee-published Commentary. Bush awarded other Medals of Freedom to Pope…
A new program in Los Angeles dedicated to finding and training emerging leaders for local synagogues graduated its first class this month. Called the Los Angeles Synagogue Leadership Institute, the program, crafted by the Los Angeles Board of Rabbis, gathered 35 students from all the major denominations and taught them, over the past two years,…
One of America’s last family-seating Orthodox-affiliated synagogues with mixed-gender seating voted this month to join the Conservative movement, leaving only one family-seating Orthodox synagogue in the entire country. Agudas Achim, a synagogue in Columbus, Ohio, voted to rescind its Orthodox affiliation at a meeting this month. The vote followed a long decision-making process in which…
WASHINGTON — As the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly steps up its social action, the movement’s association of synagogues has axed its social-action officer to save money. The two unrelated developments represent a temporary shift in the gentle contest between the Conservative movement’s congregational arm and its rabbinical union over social action and involvement in public…
WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. — A conference this month aimed at reviving Jewish life among communities in the American West turned into a debate between communal and religious leaders over the character of Jewish identity. The conference, Hadesh West, was organized by United Jewish Communities’s Renaissance and Renewal Pillar and brought together more than 70 leaders…
Senators and members of the House of Representatives are calling on the Bush administration to oppose Saudi Arabia’s admittance into the World Trade Organization unless the kingdom clearly renounces its support of the Arab boycott against Israel, aggressively cracks down on terrorist financing and improves its human rights record. In two separate letters sent last…
Several Jewish groups last week welcomed the Senate’s approval of a bill that would broaden the federal government’s authority to prosecute criminals who commit acts of violence or intimidation against individuals because of the victim’s gender, disability or sexual orientation. The Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, which passed the Senate last week by a margin…
Ordinarily the Hebrew vowel signs are not headline material, but they made the front page of the newspaper Ha’aretz on June 4. The subject was a proposed spelling reform put forth by Dr. Mordecai Mishor, a member of the Language Committee of the Hebrew Language Academy — and although Dr. Mishor’s proposal will not lead…
