. (JTA) — Rabbi A. Bruce Goldman’s peak moment of notoriety came in 1968 when, as the Jewish chaplain at Columbia University, he supported campus antiwar protesters who had occupied administration buildings. Goldman lost his job at the university the following year, having assumed the post only in 1967, apparently over his role in antiwar…
(JTA) — People made Andrea Finzi happy, and he was used to returning the favor. Even the day of his birth was a cause for celebration. He was the first boy born to his family in years. “Everyone adored and ran to cater to your needs before you even said a word,” Marina Finzi Norsi,…
(JTA) — In another lifetime, Adam “Yitz” Friedman might have been a Hasidic rebbe rather than the Madison Avenue publicist he eventually became. Named for his grandfather, Yitzchok Friedman, the founder of the Boyan Hasidic dynasty, Friedman hailed from a line of Hasidic rebbes that included the leaders of the Ruzhin, Sadigura and Rachmastrivk dynasties….
Three weeks ago, Aaron Jacobs, an Emergency Medical Technician with the San Francisco Fire Department, was dispatched to the Jewish Home for the Aged in San Francisco’s Mission District. “We got a call from there, it’s a huge facility,” Jacobs said, “and they wanted this patient, a woman, evaluated for Coronavirus. She’d spiked a fever…
A prominent Reform synagogue in Manhattan found itself on the defensive over the weekend when some congregants protested its decision to highlight the Covid-19 response efforts of an evangelical Christian organization whose politics they abhor. The group, Samaritan’s Purse, has set up a field hospital in Central Park, and Central Synagogue featured the group in…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Stanley Chera, the friend of Donald Trump whose coronavirus infection was an inflection point in making the virus tangible for the president, has died. News reports said that Chera died April 11. He was 78. My deepest sympathies go out to Frieda Chera and the family of the late, great, Stanley Chera,…
NEW YORK (JTA) — Hal Willner might have been the most willfully strange person in show business. The music producer, who died April 7 at age 64 of complications of coronavirus, had a magic touch. He could get anyone to do anything: Tom Waits to sing an unrecognizable, railroad-rough version of “Heigh Ho” from Disney’s…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, who served as Israel’s chief Sephardic rabbi for a decade beginning in 1993, died April 12 after being admitted to the hospital for treatment of COVID-19. He was 79. “Rabbi Bakshi-Doron was a teacher for all Jewish communities in Israel and around the world,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said…
(JTA) — Martin Fox was a news junky who devoured the New York Times, following public affairs with a keen interest until his final days. He was also deeply involved in Jewish communal affairs, serving as president of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ (then known as the Jewish Community Federation of Metropolitan New…
No one has been left unscathed from the effect of the coronavirus, from storeowners to rock-and-roll guitarists. Los Angeles-based writer and photographer Ayala Or-El captured some of the stories shared by members of the L.A. Jewish community. Sean Hurwitz, guitar player for the band Smash Mouth The news that his livelihood is in jeopardy caught…
In less than a week, Larry Freedman was called to fight the coronavirus epidemic on two different fronts. As a religious school director in Pittsburgh, Rabbi Freedman was tasked with moving an entire curriculum online after most public spaces were shuttered due to the virus in late March. Just a few days later, he was…
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