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Pandemic Hanukkah at Biden’s White House feels like a family gathering
Absent were the bands and choir performing traditional holiday songs. Notably missing, too, were the signature lamb-chop trays and assorted latkes. And in the pandemic-limited crowd of 150, dotted with yarmulkes with the presidential seal, a lone member of the Hasidic community of Borough Park, Brooklyn — a community that voted in large numbers for…
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Gabby Giffords’ bat mitzvah was as joyous and tearful as you’d expect
As former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords stood before the congregation of Temple Chaverim in Tucson, Ariz., and kissed her tallit, preparing to chant from the Torah for her bat mitzvah, Rabbi Stephanie Aaron placed her hand atop Giffords’ hand, her voice rising and falling along with Giffords’ own. It was an emotional moment two decades…
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Germany cut a reparations check to a Holocaust survivor. Then it demanded the money back.
The reparations checks Amira Gezow received every three months from the German government mattered to her. She had worked to get them and had helped other survivors secure theirs. For Gezow, a German-born woman who lost both her parents in the Holocaust, the checks were, monetarily, a pittance: 72.55 euros per month, or about 240…
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With special menorah, VP Harris and Doug Emhoff honor ‘mensch’ who kept paying employees after massive factory fire
This Hanukkah, as Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, the nation’s first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president, light their menorah, they are honoring a man famous for taking care of his workers. Aaron Feuerstein died of pneumonia last month at the age of 95, some 26 years after his…
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Did the pandemic lead to happier Jewish nonprofit workers? New survey suggests it did.
Jewish nonprofits were hard hit by the pandemic but many workers who survived furloughs and layoffs emerged reporting higher levels of job satisfaction. Employees said they had more autonomy and better access to information needed for their jobs as workplaces went remote 18 months ago, according to a survey conducted by Leading Edge, a group…
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Anxiety over Omicron hangs over Jewish gatherings — but the Hanukkah parties go on
The new, fast-spreading Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus is prompting rabbis, brides and synagogue-goers to wonder whether they need to take extra precautions to keep Jewish gatherings safe. Most Hanukkah events seem to be going on as planned and anxiety over the variant is low-level — but it’s there. “Our phones are ringing with…
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This one-time refugee and former Israeli paratrooper just won a seat in her county legislature
Thirty years after she was airlifted from Ethiopia to Israel fleeing religious persecution, Mazi Melesa Pilip won public office on Long Island earlier this month. The Jewish Republican unseated another Jewish woman in heavily Democratic North Hempstead, New York. Pilip, 42, beat Ellen Birnbaum — a four-term Democratic legislator, to represent Nassau County’s 10th district…
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The (more modest, less partisan) White House Hanukkah party is on!
It was touch and go for the White House Hanukkah party this year. For the longest time, no one knew whether it was happening at all. It came together at practically the last minute, just a few days before the holiday began. And it appears as if the guest list is far skimpier than in…
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Your turn: Readers share (strong) feelings about Christmas, Hanukkah and the so-called ‘holiday season’
In her latest “Looking Forward” column, our editor-in-chief, Jodi Rudoren, went on something of a rant about a new Old Navy commercial purporting to celebrate the “ALL-idays” but in fact redolent of the colors, symbols and sayings of Christmas. Rudoren acknowledged that she has always had a big Christmas chip on her shoulder, and said…
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Jurors award $25 million to Charlottesville plaintiffs, deadlocked on federal racially-motivated conspiracy
The jury deadlocked on whether defendants in the Charlottesville trial had committed “racially motivated violence” under federal law. But the attorneys in this landmark civil case against neo-Nazis won a verdict Tuesday that allowed them to declare victory. Jurors found 24 far-right individuals and organizations had broken Virginia civil conspiracy laws, and had assaulted and…
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Einstein manuscript goes for $11 million at auction, highest ever paid for the genius’ memorabilia
A rare 54-page manuscript with Albert Einstein’s early scribblings on the general theory of relativity sold for $11.4 million at Christie’s auction house in Paris on Tuesday. The documents were expected to sell for $3 million, but many in the room seemed surprised when the bidding went on for more than 15 minutes. The sale…
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