When coronavirus shut down Minnesota, Aaron Berc kept hearing story after story about people that could no longer pay their rent if they wanted to feed their families. As a community organizer for the St. Paul-based social justice organization Jewish Community Action, he had also been exploring how Jewish text study could bolster his organizing…
The Facebook post opens like this: “I present to you: your bubbie’s wet dream.” He’s a nice Jewish boy over six feet tall. He’s crushing it at his hedge fund. He volunteers in his spare time. And he will make you the best pancakes you’ve ever had — if you sleep over. If you’re ever…
It was during the traditional Muslim call to prayer when Rabbi Tova Leibovic-Douglas found herself becoming emotional. “I kept thinking about my Muslim friends who were not in one space with their family or friends for Ramadan and how beautiful and painful our world is,” she said. The rabbi was one of over 1400 participants…
(JTA) — Enrique Mugica Herzog, a former political prisoner who became the first Jew to serve in a Spanish government since the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, died of the coronavirus on April 10. He was 88. In the early 1980s, Mugica played a pivotal role in talks that led to the establishment…
For the last year, one of Dr. Michael Bukstein’s duties as synagogue president for B’nai Sholom Temple, the oldest synagogue in the state of Illinois, has been trying to sell its beautiful and unique building. Located in the small city of Quincy, the building is in a neo-Byzantine style of architecture, with detailed brickwork and…
(JTA) — Whenever anyone stopped by his room at the Hebrew Association for Special Children in Brooklyn, Marnin Soltes would show them his extensive, impeccably organized record recollection. He especially liked American folk and blues from the ‘50s and ‘60s. “His favorite singer songwriter was Josh White, and his favorite song was ‘Foggy, Foggy Dew,’”…
The 10,000 children who attend the Reform Movement’s sleepaway camps learned on Thursday that coronavirus had cancelled their summer. The news left some devastated, but the impact on children, their families and the camps themselves has just started to unfold. “Camp is always the best part of my summer!” wrote a girl named Hanna Pearce…
I love camp. I went for the whole summer starting before I turned 8. First, to Camp Pembroke, where I was named Outstanding Lower Camp Athlete in 1979, and then for seven glorious summers to Camp Yavneh, where I was co-captain of the (losing) Maccabiah team in 1986. One of the first things I did…
Ruben Arquilevich is a Jewish summer camp guy. He says his life was shaped by Jewish summer camp. Over the past three decades, he’s been a camper, a counselor, a professional staffer and the director of a Jewish summer camp. He met his wife at Jewish summer camp. He sent his kids to Jewish summer…
“Small-scale commercial production is, every moment of every day, giving birth spontaneously to capitalism and the bourgeoisie…wherever there is small business and freedom of trade, capitalism appears.”— V.I. Lenin A great connoisseur as well as sworn enemy of the free market, Vladimir Lenin might smile a bit if he witnessed what is now happening to…
(JTA) — For their third date, Benjamin Schaeffer took Lisa Smid to the New York Transit Museum for a personal tour. Schaffer knew his way around the Lower Manhattan shrine to the city’s transportation systems. A veteran subway conductor, Schaeffer loved all things transportation. For more than two decades, he had worked for New York’s…
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