In every generation, we tell the same story, sing the same songs, eat the same ritual foods. But this year, we did it while sheltering in place, with our small family units or by ourselves. Many of us connected to far-flung relatives and friends by Zoom or some other platform, or dialed into a public…
In a tidal wave of pandemic-related layoffs, hundreds of employees at Jewish community centers across the United States have been let go as the institutions, central organizing forces of Jewish life, have had to close their doors due to the coronavirus. The early numbers are staggering: Bay Area JCCs have furloughed some 700 people. Philadelphia’s…
NEW YORK (JTA) — When Helène Aylon was a girl in Borough Park, Brooklyn, it was impossible to imagine she would one day become a barrier-breaking fine artist. After all, the principal of the Shulamith School for Girls, where Aylon was a student, persuaded her parents not to allow her to attend an arts high…
(JTA) — If there was one institution with whom Irving Carter was most closely associated, it was Magen David Adom, the Israeli affiliate of the Red Cross. The vice president of MDA’s British fundraising arm, Carter’s donations over three decades funded the procurement of dozens of ambulances, 12 bikes, two mobile blood banks and a…
. (JTA) — When Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet became rabbi of London’s Orthodox Mill Hill Synagogue in 1993, he entered into a congregation rich with communal leaders. Among them was Michael Goldmeier, a man once described by the head of the British chief rabbi’s office as “one of the most prominent members of Anglo Jewry.” Schochet…
For centuries, sitting shiva has provided Jewish mourners a meaningful ritual to gain closure after the death of a loved one. When you’ve just suffered a loss, it’s supremely comforting to have other people around — people to keep you fed, people to play with your kids, people with whom to share treasured family stories….
When war came to Sarajevo in 1992, Vladimir Andrle was only a child. But he remembers the synagogue and Jewish community center as a refuge in a city besieged by violence. A generation later, Andrle is a leader of the Jewish Community of Sarajevo, mobilizing relief against the novel coronavirus. While Jews around the world…
Michael Goldsmith, 34, is the person everyone always called to shlep something heavy, like a piece of furniture. An IT consultant, he’s always been robustly healthy, but on March 11, he started showing symptoms of the novel coronavirus. He had no underlying conditions, and his family has no idea how he caught it. Yet he’s…
(JTA) — Bentzion Coopertstock was a father of 11 children, but they weren’t the only ones who knew him as abba. Cooperstock was well-known as the abba (Hebrew for “father”) of Meron, the northern Israeli city where thousands of pilgrims gather every year to celebrate the end of a plague that killed thousands of Jews…
For thousands of years, the Jewish story has been characterized, largely, by the yearning for our homeland. Now, for the third time in history, we have a sovereign Jewish state in our ancient land. But there remains wide variation in how even Jewish Israelis view ourselves as a people-with-a-state. As Passover approaches, I’ve been thinking…
Carefully, with great precision, Hilda Namm recited the Hebrew words from the 25th chapter of the Book of Exodus. Her daughter Evelyn sat closely beside her on the couch in Hilda’s home. The two were close together, their shoulders often brushing, Hilda in a white top with a wide collar, Evelyn wearing burgundy. Evelyn handed…
