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The secret not-so-Jewish history of gefilte fish
(JTA) — This article originally appeared on The Nosher, 70 Faces Media’s Jewish food site. Some see gefilte fish as a delicacy, others as something too disgusting to contemplate. Either way, it would probably appear on most people’s short list of classic Ashkenazi foods. For good reason — it’s been part of the Eastern European Jewish diet…
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A blind Jewish Michigan Supreme Court justice was stuck in Dubai en route to Israel. He stayed there for months.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (JTA) — On a recent weekday afternoon, if you had walked down the Palm Jumeirah Boardwalk, a promenade overlooking the Arabian Gulf that encircles this capital city’s famous palm-shaped artificial island, you may have encountered a man repeating legal texts line by line to himself for hour after hour. That man…
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How a Harvard grad became a Jewish voice for Uighur justice
Until two years ago, Amitai Abouzaglo didn’t know about the Uighurs. Today, he’s leading an advocacy movement within the Jewish world on their behalf. In 2018, Abouzaglo, then a Harvard University student, was invited to the Oslo Freedom Forum which discusses human rights and brings in activists from around the world. The conference changed his…
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Your guide to 2021 (virtual) Yom HaShoah commemorations
Despite a year of isolation and pandemic restrictions, Jewish communities around the country are finding ways to come together for Yom HaShoah, the annual commemoration to honor the more than six million Jews murdered by Nazis and Nazi collaborators during the Holocaust. From coast to coast, synagogues, cities, museums, Jewish community centers, and others are…
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You have a rabbi to thank for this special Zoom feature
With in-person services shuttered amid the pandemic, countless American Jews prepared to celebrate the High Holidays over Zoom last September. Behind the scenes, one rabbi was in a race against the clock to make that possible. “It was really almost at the 11th hour,” said Rabbi Joshua Heller, the spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Torah…
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Progressives rally around Nancy Kaufman for antisemitism envoy role
As factions within the Jewish community jockey over who President Joe Biden will name as his special envoy for combating antisemitism, some progressive support is coalescing around Nancy K. Kaufman, former chief executive officer of the National Council of Jewish Women. Kaufman, who told the Forward she has been in touch with the Biden administration…
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Remembering Rabbi Robert Marx, who marched with King, called on Jews to side with the oppressed
When Rabbi Robert Marx died last week at his Michigan home at the age of 93, he left behind a history of social justice activism in Chicago. It began in 1966, when he watched Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. lead a march through a hostile white neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side. “What I saw in…
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In this Florida synagogue, 5 people committed suicide in 4 months. Here’s how the rabbi is coping.
Rabbi David Steinhardt of Boca Raton, Fla., confessed that he had never dealt with anything remotely comparable: in the last four months, five congregants or their close relatives have died by suicide. All were single men aged 20 to 60. In contrast, during his nearly 38 years in the rabbinate, Steinhardt – spiritual leader of…
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Meet the founders of Masa Madre, a bakery blending Mexican and Jewish flavors
On a bright Chicago spring morning, longtime friends and business partners Tamar Fasja Unikel and Elena Vasquez Felgueres ventured out from their Southside home to the northwest side of the city to view a rental space. It’s the first one of many that they planned to visit, as the two are in search of a…
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The next major Jewish action is on behalf of Uighurs
(JTA) — When Rayhan Asat attended a Passover seder last month, its contours seemed familiar and different at once — especially the tradition of leaving a seat empty at the table. It reminded Asat, a lawyer, of leaving a seat empty for her brother, Ekpar, at her graduation from Harvard Law School in 2016. Ekpar,…
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From HUD secretary to NYC mayor? Shaun Donovan’s path infused with Jewish ethos
One summer in the early 1980s, Shaun Donovan and his sister Justine – both high school students at the time – traveled to Eastern Europe to visit the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps. For Donovan, now a candidate for mayor of New York in the June 22 Democratic primaries, visiting the historic sites had a…
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