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Disabled Needs Grow Even as Jewish Groups Focus on Issue
(JTA) — In the coming months, six young Jews with disabilities will start paid internships at major Jewish federations through a pilot program. If successful, the program will expand to communities throughout North America. In the fall, Manhattan’s first Jewish day school for children with special needs will open. Meanwhile, the Foundation for Jewish Camp…
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110-Year-Old Candymaker Now Stakes Claims as Oldest Holocaust Survivor
(Haaretz) — Alice Herz-Sommer, the Jewish pianist from London and survivor of Theresienstadt, died Sunday at the age of 110. After the passing of Sommer, whom the media described as the world’s oldest Holocaust survivor, the unofficial title passes to Yisrael Kristal, an Israeli confectioner from Haifa, who celebrated his 110th birthday last September. Yisrael…
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Orthodox Therapists Battle Ban On Gay ‘Conversion’ Treatment
Ultra-Orthodox mental health professionals are pushing back against efforts to restrict so-called gay “conversion” therapy, a controversial practice that aims to curb or reverse patients’ same-sex attraction. Amid a growing wave of legislation banning conversion therapy for teenagers, a group known as Nefesh has joined with the ultra-Orthodox umbrella group Agudath Israel of America to…
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Hasidic Development Plans Spark Bitter Feud in Upstate N.Y. Town
One night in January, an Orthodox Jewish real estate developer brought a handgun to a planning board meeting in a small upstate New York town. The gun was on the waist of one of the two uniformed security guards accompanying Shalom Lamm, who may be the most hated man in the town of Mamakating. The…
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The World’s Oldest Holocaust Survivor, Alice Herz-Sommer, Dies at 110
(Haaretz) — The world’s oldest Holocaust survivor, Alice Herz-Sommer, died Sunday at the age 110 in London. Herz-Sommer, a pianist, born in Prague, was the subject of a documentary “The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life”, nominated for an Oscar this year. “Young people take everything for granted, whereas we, the elderly, understand…
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Breakdancing’s Latest Mecca? Jerusalem
They have names like Elastic, G-Rock, Aladdin, Pac Man and Splinter. They sport hoodies, backwards baseball caps and Adidas footwear. They dance in circles, but they don’t do the hora; they’re Israeli b-boys and b-girls, and they have serious flavor. Israel’s top break dancers took part in the “Prove Yourself B-Boy Jam” on Thursday, competing…
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Is There an Echo in Here?
Jeffrey Lubin writes to ask what a bat-kol is and why it isn’t a ben-kol. Since this question won’t mean much to most of you, I’d better explain. The roughly 2,000-year-old Hebrew word bat-kol is not found in the Bible, and first appears in early rabbinic literature. Translatable literally as “the daughter of a voice,”…
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Bitcoin’s Jewish Whiz Kid
Before the late-January arrest of Charlie Shrem, the yeshiva-educated mastermind behind the online commerce site BitInstant, I hadn’t made a Jewish connection with Bitcoin. A digital currency that’s not regulated or backed by any government or central bank, and whose value depends on demand, Bitcoin has been all over the business and technology pages, but…
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Boasting About Being Pregnant? In Politically Correct Brooklyn, Fuhggedaboudit!
There is perhaps no place so emblematic of today’s yuppie sensibilities as this gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood. An affluent area full of young families, yoga studios, coffee shops and famous writers, Park Slope — until recently, the home community of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio — is a symbol of liberal sincerity and, sometimes, over-the-top…
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The Global LGBT Pushback
The theory that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction sadly applies to the sphere of human rights. As the march for marriage equality in the United States quickens — 17 states and the District of Columbia now allow same-sex couples to wed and 10 others states offer civil unions and partnerships…
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Anne Heyman’s Son Gets Poignant Welcome at Rwanda School
A groundbreaking Rwandan school for genocide orphans has welcomed the son of founder Anne Heyman with open arms — just three weeks after the Jewish philanthropist was killed in a tragic horse-riding accident in Florida. Jonathan Merrin, 19, arrived at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village this week as part of a month-long service trip with other…
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