Turkish authorities received a tip recently that a trove of smuggled contraband was passing through the Black Sea city of Samsun in two vehicles. For Turkish police, that’s nothing out of the ordinary. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, the country is a transit point for many things, including drugs, refugees, arms and, in…
When Yale University announced last summer that the 2020-21 academic year would be mostly remote and with heavy restrictions for the fraction of students permitted on campus, Isabel Kalb decided to postpone her first year of college. “I didn’t want to lose my freshman year to the pandemic,” explained Kalb, 19. But after spending the…
A suggestion to rabbis: don’t do your own tax return this year. The pandemic forced most people to move their office to their home and rabbis were no exception. Rabbis found themselves setting up a room in their house from which to work, buying office supplies and camera lighting to Zoom with congregants and participate…
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(JTA) — As a young Jewish refugee in the late 1930s, Marianne Steiner brought creative flair to her job as a window dresser at Saks Fifth Avenue, the upscale department store in Manhattan. While her family was well off before fleeing Nazi Germany, their finances in New York were more limited. At the time, Steiner…
In a rare public statement on a political appointment, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs called out misleading allegations of antisemitism leveled against Kristen Clarke, President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. In a letter sent to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week, the…
The Anti-Defamation League has paused a project in which its staff members edited Wikipedia using pseudonyms after coming under fire from Wikipedia editors for potentially violating rules regarding conflicts of interest. The ADL launched an effort last spring to train some of its employees to contribute to Wikipedia articles but it wasn’t until late last…
We’re in the middle of counting the Omer, the period of time during which Jewish tradition mourns the passing of 12,000 pairs of Rabbi Akiva’s students. On April 7, another “student” of Rabbi Akiva passed away: Suzi Brozman, who spent much of her journalism career reporting for the Atlanta Jewish Times. Of course, Suzi did…
For the first 25 years of her life, Emily Grodin’s vocabulary was limited to her name and just a couple of words. Then she got a new speech therapy aide — and an iPad that opened floodgates of personal expression. Now Grodin, a 29-year-old with nonverbal autism, and her mother Valerie Gilpeer have written a…
Pastor Tim Thompson, who leads a 1000-member evangelical church in southern California, is already planning a trip to Israel with members of his church in November 2021. But he and other churchgoers are not convinced they’ll actually make the trip, even if Israel opens up to tourists by that time. They are awaiting word on…
Cambria Gordon’s family sabbatical in Madrid in 2016 became more than a time away from her native Los Angeles. Gordon felt her identity — as a writer and as a Jew — blossom. She launched into a journey of research and inquiry that led to the writing and publication of her new young adult novel,…
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