Gaby Glueckselig’s 100th birthday, celebrated last week at the Leo Baeck Institute for German Jewish History, represented a convergence of New York past and present, German and Austrian culture, experience and youth. For 25 years, Glueckselig’s name has been almost synonymous with the Stammtisch, a weekly German-language gathering that was started by two refugees, Bavarian…
On my first day of teaching at Bar Ilan University, during a tour of the palm-tree-lined campus near Tel Aviv, the program administrator informed me apologetically that I’d been assigned a basement classroom in a building some distance from the English department. I wasn’t concerned — over the years I’ve taught in basement classrooms, in…
In the basement of the Jewish Cultural Center, a small group of folks in their 20s and early 30s comes trickling in for the weekly Friday night Sabbath celebration. It’s fewer people than usual, about 15 participants, since many have gone out of town for the May Day holiday, but the members represent a wide…
American Jewry’s large centrist and liberal groups are seeking to radically reform the community’s main umbrella organization, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. This new effort is the biggest fallout yet from the Presidents Conference’s controversial decision to reject the membership bid of J Street, the dovish Israel lobby. In a May…
The Seesaw is a new kind of advice column in which a a broad range of columnists will address the real life issues faced by interfaith couples and families. Join the discussion by commenting on this post, sharing it on Facebook or following the Forward on Twitter. And keep the questions coming. You can email…
(JTA) — When the 92nd Street Y announced last week that it had hired a new executive director, Crain’s New York Business went with an eye-catching headline. “It’s a goy! 92nd St. Y picks first non-Jewish chief.” The announcement that Henry Timms would lead the famed Upper East Side cultural center represented the culmination of…
(JTA) — The vote is over, but the debate rages on over the recent rejection of J Street’s application to join the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Depending on where you stand, the 22-17 vote rejecting the application was either about J Street’s own missteps or the conference’s failure to live up…
(JTA) — Sure, the news from the city of Detroit seems endlessly grim: bankruptcy, crime and so forth. But the metro area, whose northwest suburbs host a panoply of Jewish amenities, is the most affordable place in the United States to raise a “committed Jewish family,” at least according to one graduate student’s admittedly “back-of-the-napkin”…
A lot has changed for Baltimore’s Northwest Orthodox community since 1969. For one, it’s grown from a tight colony of a few hundred families to tens of thousands of residents. It’s also drifted northward as small synagogues have sprouted up and down the community’s streets. But people still remember. The store near the corner of…
In court in April, William Rapfogel wore a huge black yarmulke and a grim expression as he admitted to stealing more than $1 million from the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, the major New York charity he ran for two decades. Rapfogel’s future is clear: The 59-year-old, once among New York’s most powerful political figures,…
For more than 1,000 young Jews assembled in Moscow at the end of April, it was just another successful event in a chain of gatherings that has become a magnet for Russian-speaking Jews around the world. But this year’s Limmud FSU meeting also marked a change: The food served was all kosher for the first…
100% of profits support our journalism
