BOSTON (JTA) — Lucille Weiss had a zest for life, traversing continents and cultivating a home teeming with family and friends — and 17 species of pests, including a skunk and a parrot. At the age of 80, she set out to visit a roost of butterflies in central Mexico. The steep uphill journey required…
BOSTON (JTA) – Sidney Forman performed before many audiences over the course of his life. He sang in barbershop quartets, in synagogue choirs and for the ordination of a cardinal. At Boston’s Hatch Shell concert venue, he sang for the legendary Boston Pops maestro Arthur Fiedler. But a year ago, when Forman packed the house…
Facebook is failing to contain content from a growing right-wing extremist group called the “boogaloo” movement, experts say. Researchers from Avaaz, a not-for-profit that works to combat disinformation, found more than 20 Facebook pages calling for armed violence and promoting conspiracy theories about the George Floyd protests by self-identified “Boogaloo Boys,” members of an anti-government…
For Miriam Levy-Haim, the most exciting part of the march was watching the crowd grow. She’d expected to gather between 30 and 50 members of her Crown Heights Chabad community to march against police violence on a Sunday afternoon in early June. In fact, hundreds of parents, teenagers and young children showed up bearing signs,…
Gideon Taylor, the former executive director of the Claims Conference who was one of the leaders under which employees perpetrated an elaborate fraud, will be the new chairman of the organization on June 30 barring extenuating circumstances, a spokeswoman said. Taylor is the sole nominee to replace Julius Berman, who served in the role for…
(JTA) — In the world of Orthodox Judaism, men may run the synagogues — but Lenora Garfinkel built them. Garfinkel was one of the first women to study architecture at the prestigious Cooper Union College in New York and went on to build Jewish community buildings across the New York metropolitan area over the course…
Rep. Eliot Engel, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and one of the top congressional allies of the Israeli government, is expected to lose his primary. With more than 33,000 in-person votes cast in New York’s 16th District, containing parts of the Bronx and Westchester County, progressive challenger Jamaal Bowman was beating Engel…
A national push to dismantle memorials that glorify racism might help the Jewish community of Charlotte, N.C. achieve a long-sought goal: the permanent removal of a monument to Judah Benjamin, the most prominent Jewish figure in the Confederate government. Erected in 1948 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the memorial to Benjamin is a…
Professor Zeev Sternhell z”l, one of Israel’s leading intellectuals and political observers, passed away in Jerusalem on Sunday at the age of 85. Sternhell was an internationally acclaimed political scientist renowned for his work on the ideological and historical origins of fascism. His early work focused on strains of fascist thought in France that few…
RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) — Efrahim Kopel Meniuk, the president of the Brazil-Israel Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Rio de Janeiro chapter, died of COVID-19 on June 22. He was 82. Born in Brazil to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, Meniuk led the institution since early 2019. Founded in 1959, the chamber promotes commercial ties between Latin…
BOSTON (JTA) – Long before he joined the rabbinate, Rievan Slavkin had an ear for music. Born into a musical family and gifted with perfect pitch, Slavkin led the choir at the Pittsburgh synagogue where he grew up and later became the organist for services during his rabbinic studies at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati….
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