(JTA) — In an unheated synagogue with no running water, a dozen Jews are trying to keep warm as temperatures here veer toward the single digits. Not moving too much helps keep the warmth under their thick coats, they say, a technique developed as the group gathered at least once a week to maintain a sense…
Ask the average person their image of an archivist and the likely answer you’ll get is someone resembling Wally Cox — a mild mannered bespectacled man behind a counter with rows of document shelves towering behind him. My most distinct memory of Robert Wolfe is quite different: It is of a short, stocky man shaking…
1) The number of women in leadership roles is no better now in major national Jewish federations, service and advocacy groups and religious and educational institutions than it was five years ago, when the Forward compiled its first list of executive salaries in communal institutions. There were 11 in 2009; there are 11 today. 2)…
The Forward’s sixth annual survey of Jewish non-profit leaders is presented here as a public service. The information on salary, revenue and the like is supposed to be available to everyone — that’s part of the civic contract charities make in exchange for not paying taxes — but nowhere else will you find this level…
(JTA) — While setting up a synagogue at the American naval base where she volunteers, Ahuvah (Amanda) Gipson made something of a bitter-sweet discovery. Rifling through a storage area at the sprawling American-Spanish military complex Naval Station Rota in 2012, Gipson, a former naval outreach professional who now teaches off base, found three dusty Torah…
The massive New York Jewish social service agency FEGS will cut programs after discovering it lost a startling $19 million in the 2014 fiscal year, the Forward has learned. The organization abruptly dropped its new CEO on the day it disclosed the loss to staff. FEGS revealed the $19 million loss in an all-staff email…
The Dutch Jewish politician Onno Hoes stepped down as the mayor of Maastricht after media published secretly filmed footage of him on a date with a 20-year-old man. The publication last week of the footage of Hoes, 53, who is openly gay, followed an earlier paparazzi report from last year in which he was photographed…
Yeshiva University’s plan to shed its cash-draining medical school to Montefiore Health System has collapsed. The breakdown of Y.U.’s plan to hand over operational and financial responsibility for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, revealed in a December 9 report by Moody’s Investors Service, has exacerbated Y.U.’s financial woes. Moody’s left its B3 junk status…
(Haaretz) — The large synagogue at the heart of the international Lubavitch movement, called 770 after its address on Eastern Parkway, is busy around the clock, with people coming and going to pray and study religious texts. No one was prepared for what happened late Monday night, when a visibly agitated man walked in, reportedly yelled…
In one telling moment, the Jewish state’s rising right-wing star and the Democratic Party’s most prominent pro-Israel donor demonstrated just how deep the coming gap may be between Israel and its closest ally. Haim Saban, a key backer of Hillary Clinton who grew up in Israel and launched his career there, wanted to know how,…
My great-aunt made the revelation offhand, as if pointing out the drizzle outside her Geneva apartment. I was sharing sushi with her and my great-uncle last month, when she mentioned a new novel I should read, “The Man Who Loved Dogs,” about the assassination of the Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky. “Oh yes. Did you…
