The first time I reached out to Gabe Fleisher, the writer of the daily “Wake Up To Politics” newsletter, he asked if I would mind waiting until the weekend to talk. His final exams, he said, would have to take precedence on school nights. Fleisher is 15 years old, and after a recent profile in…
The spirit of the 1960s, with all its countercultural passion, ecstatic practices and transcendental yearnings, touched American Judaism most of all through the Jewish Renewal movement, which sought to reclaim the religion’s mystical traditions. Throughout the life of its charismatic founder, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Renewal’s adherents and admirers wondered how organized and structured it should…
(JTA) — WESTERBORK, Netherlands (JTA) — Nothing about the footage that Rudolf Breslauer filmed here on May 30, 1944, suggests that it was taken inside one of Europe’s largest Nazi concentration camps. In the film by Breslauer, a German-Jewish inmate of the Westerbork camp in Holland’s northeast, prisoners are seen playing soccer enthusiastically in team…
Jason Kander may have lost his bid for Missouri’s seat in the Senate last year, but one seminal TV spot has ensured that he’s still a rising star among Democrats trying to figure out how to win back America’s heartland. In the ad, Kander discusses the need for background checks on gun sales. Not a…
When philanthropist Barbara Dobkin founded Ma’yan in 1993, her goal was to foster the women’s movement within Jewish communities. Which is exactly what Ma’yan achieved: Based out of the JCC Manhattan, the organization published an influential feminist Passover Haggadah; helped launch the Ritualwell website — offering new resources for spiritual practice — and worked with…
In Texas, it may soon be required for women who have received an abortion to bury or cremate the fetal tissue. In Missouri, Gov. Eric Greitens is seeking to overturn a recently passed St. Louis ordinance that bans employers and landlords from discriminating against women who have had an abortion, used contraceptives or are pregnant….
Stephanie Goldfarb is a social worker at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago and also the winner of “America’s Best Cook” on the Food Network and proprietor of Seven Species Supper Club, a bimonthly dinner at her home in Edgewater. As a member of both Chicago’s Jewish and LGBTQ communities, she was upset by the…
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban long proclaimed zero tolerance of anti-Semitism but has more recently risked angering Israel and Jewish people with remarks apparently courting radical right-wing voters ahead of 2018 elections. Orban’s language, embracing notions of “ethnic homogeneity,” appears fashioned to occupy territory on the far right abandoned by the radical nationalist opposition party…
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Livraria Ets Haim is the world’s oldest functioning Jewish library. As such, it is no stranger to the prospect of imminent destruction. Founded in 1616 by Jews who fled Catholic persecution in Spain and Portugal, the three-room library is adjacent to Amsterdam’s majestic Portuguese Synagogue in the Dutch capital’s center. The 30,000-volume collection…
There are a few things that everyone can agree on about what transpired at the Chicago Dyke March last Saturday. Somewhere along the two-mile parade route through the Little Village neighborhood, a discussion began between a group of queer Palestinians and three Jewish women carrying rainbow flags with blue Stars of David in the middle…
The numbers in the public benefits fraud scam in the Orthodox enclave of Lakewood, New Jersey, are stunning. Fourteen arrests so far, and counting. More than $2 million in fraudulently obtained government funds. Hundreds of others scrambling to avoid prosecution for similar crimes. Law enforcement sources say that the schemes are both “widespread” and some…
