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A Jewish food festival draws big names online
Lining up participants for The Great Big Jewish Food Fest has been the easiest experience with event planning Jeffrey Yoskowitz has ever had. “Not a single person we’ve asked has said a flat out ‘no,’”Yoskowitz said, “everyone has said ‘I’m in, I want to be part of it.’” Yoskowitz is the coauthor of the “The…
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A Second Chance at Motherhood
“I always say that I was born to live.” Helen Grun Moss As an oral historian for 30 years, I’ve interviewed many Holocaust survivors, and for most, Mother’s and Father’s Day are a painful reminder of parents who were murdered, as well as a joyful celebration of the miracle of being parents themselves. This was…
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As a counselor for kids with disabilities, I learned just how important summer camp can be
There we were, on the third day of camp in summer 2012, trying to get the bunk ready for Shabbat: me, unprepared for what was happening in skin-tight khakis and boat shoes; my friend David, a muscle-bound future Marine; a former Israeli special-forces soldier from the cabin next door whose name escapes me now; and…
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Rabbis: Synagogues should be among last places to reopen. What does that mean for High Holidays?
The United States is starting to reopen, but a broad range of Jewish leaders are citing religious values to say that synagogues should be among the last places to do so. And compounds the uncertainty around the High Holidays, which happen in the fall and are the peak season of the Jewish year. Will American…
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UJA funds COVID tests in a school and on a playground
UJA-Federation of New York and Brightpoint Health, a community health center, are offering COVID-19 testing in schools and a playground in Brooklyn and the Bronx starting Friday. The testing is by appointment only, and patients must be showing symptoms and have a temperature above 100.5 degrees, or must be essential workers. “Testing is a critical…
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Besieged de Blasio accused of double standards over social distancing enforcement
First he was accused of anti-Semitism for his crackdown on a Hasidic funeral last week in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Days later he navigated claims of racism after the New York Police Department made violent arrests of young men of color for not following social distancing regulations. On Thursday night, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office released data…
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Jerome Spector, 79, Candlemaker Who Planted Gardens
(JTA) — Jerome Spector started making candles when he was living on a commune outside Bennington, Vermont, in the 1960s. Spector was a potter back then, but he didn’t have a kiln. So when someone suggested he could earn money by making candles, Spector used his clay pots as molds, filling them with wax and…
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Saadya Ehrenpreis, 35, Defied Expectations With Determination And Joy
(JTA) — When Saadya Ehrenpreis was an infant, a doctor told his mother that he would “never walk, talk or amount to anything.” He wound up doing all three. Ehrenpreis was born with Down syndrom, but he was intensely determined. With the help of his family, he not only learned to walk and talk, but…
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‘She helped me learn Yiddish reading the Forward:’ 16 readers recall their mothers’ love for our paper
Raquel Bakalar, a Cuban immigrant who grew up in Los Angeles, remembers her mom proudly pointing out her name as a solver of the newspaper’s Yiddish word puzzles. Linda Galler, a law professor at Hofstra University, said her mom used the Forward to teach her Yiddish as a teenager. And Betty Baumel recalls the Sunday…
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Letter from Brazil: Is Bolsonaro a Nazi?
Even before his election, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro inspired theories and debates about the best way to categorize his extreme-right ideology. There were no shortage of experts who openly calledhim a fascist. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, there are those who think he has gone even further. “Bolsonaro’s attitude towards the Covid-19 pandemic is Nazi,” said…
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(Not) all Jewish camps are cancelled (yet) (maybe). Here’s how some are trying to stay open.
After the Union of Reform Judaism, which operates North America’s largest network of Jewish summer camps, sent an email last week to thousands of families announcing that all its camps were cancelled, an independent camp in Pennsylvania issued an email announcement of its own. “Camp Zeke is not a URJ camp” it declared, in bold…
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