On a warm Friday near downtown Los Angeles, a line of locals stretches down 12th Street, from Union to Valencia. At the corner, they cross the street, looping back in front of the Pico Union Project. As they pass in front of the gate, a man wearing gloves and a mask hands them a bag….
(JTA) — David Behrbom was a talented athlete in his youth, making it all the way to the high school state championships in baseball. But it was a moment on the field in a Babe Ruth League game that his brother says truly encapsulates Behrbom’s character. It was the final inning, the game was tied,…
For Jewish nonprofit employees, finding out that their organization has obtained a loan from the Small Business Administration’s Payroll Protection Program is a piece of long-sought good news. Even the name of the program signals that it’s a harbinger of job security in a turbulent time. And while it’s technically a loan, the government will…
President Donald Trump said Monday that he is taking hydroxychloroquine, the controversial antimalarial drug whose use to combat COVID-19 has been touted heavily by a Hasidic doctor in upstate New York. The doctor, Vladimir Zelenko, who has expressed support for Trump on social media, sent a letter to the White House in March about his…
Amid a seeming avalanche of Jewish organizational cutbacks, closings and furloughs, the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) announced last Wednesday, that it would be cutting its staff by 20% due to coronavirus-related stresses. As with so many basic institutions of American life, the economic disruption caused by the pandemic is highlighting existential questions about the…
Orthodox rabbis in Atlanta have agreed on a framework for how synagogues can safely reopen – and at least one began doing so on Monday. Synagogues across the country shut their doors in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. But three weeks after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp proclaimed that houses of worship could reopen, 15…
BOSTON (JTA) – As a teenager growing up in the West End of Boston in the early 1940s, Hyman Siegal was a regular at the West End House, a philanthropic club that offered programming for the sons of immigrants and a place to gather away from the crowded tenement homes. It was there that he…
A few years ago, Sarah Blitzstein and a few close friends mapped out an unconventional 5K route. Instead of passing through local parks or looping around prominent Los Angeles landmarks, they chose branches of an institution that had been central to their friendship dating back to their youth: The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. “It…
Tom would prefer to say he “lived outside” for seven months. He likes the sound of it better than “homeless.” Semantics aside, the reality is that this accomplished scientist with a PhD in toxicology from MIT, a $400,000 income, and a condo in one of Boston’s priciest neighborhoods ended up living by himself in the…
Conservative and Reform Judaism — the United States’ two biggest egalitarian denominations — have been converging for decades. Now coronavirus has wiped out yet another difference between them. Even before the pandemic, Reform communities had embraced streaming services. Conservative synagogues, however, mostly avoided it in order to keep technology from creeping into Shabbat observance. Now…
Many of the most prominent Jewish summer camps in America have announced that they will not be operating this summer, or have privately admitted that opening will be close to impossible. But there is another segment of the Jewish camping world that’s still holding out hope: for-profit camps that attract a heavily Jewish clientele but…
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