South African Jews blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his controversial decision to snub Nelson Mandela’s memorial service. Amid public anger over Netanyahu’s bizarre claim that it would cost too much to attend, Jews slammed the move and expressed hope it would not diminish the outpouring of emotion from Jews over the death of…
(JTA) — Before Sacha Litman shares his data analysis with his synagogue clients, he likes to have the board members and staff guess the contents. Which programs are most expensive and most popular? How many Hebrew school parents would recommend the congregation to a friend? Eighty percent of the time, Litman says, the assumptions of synagogue…
Hillel International, American Jewry’s campus outreach group, appeared headed toward a clash with its Swarthmore College chapter following the Swarthmore Hillel’s decision to allow militant critics of Israel and Zionism to take part in its programming. The unanimous December 9 vote by Swarthmore Hillel’s student board repudiated Hillel International’s Israel programming guidelines as constrictions on…
‘There are no online reviews for hospices,” I said to my 79-year-old brother shortly after he announced he was stopping dialysis. His decision meant this was the first day of the rest of his life, yet we both laughed. Jack had been admitted to the hospital with pneumonia, complicated by serious heart and kidney problems….
Ronald Perelman is in the news, and once again it is for his family’s trademark feuds, fueled by millions, many millions, of dollars. In the latest round, now on display at a New Jersey court, Perelman’s daughter is suing her uncle over her grandfather’s inheritance for more than $600 million. In the past decades, there…
Jewish South Africa paid an emotional tribute Sunday to Nelson Mandela — a man they dubbed the rainbow nation’s Joseph for overcoming apartheid to build a future based on reconciliation. Speaking to an overflow crowd of several thousand people in a Johannesburg suburb, Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein recounted the Biblical story of Joseph, who overcame…
Over the course of a decade, the letters poured into the Central Council of Jews in Germany like a river. “Is it possible that the excessive violence in Israel, including the murder of innocent children, corresponds to the long tradition of your people?” asked one. “For the last two thousand years, you have been robbing…
“Also, one will beautify [Shabbat candle lighting] when the wick is made from cotton, flax or cannabis…” That’s right, cannabis. This dictate, found in the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law), piqued the curiosity of Boston geriatrician Yosef Glassman when he was reading about Sabbath rituals on a religious quest nearly two decades ago. The…
South African Jews joined the rest of the nation and the world in mourning the death of Nelson Mandela Friday with prayers and memories of the iconic figure who led the country from apartheid to freedom. “You are talking about a person larger than life with so much compassion for every person in this country…
Nelson Mandela, who died December 5, has become a beloved icon for all of South Africa, and no less for its Jewish community. But until he became the first democratically elected president of South Africa, he had had no formal relationship with its organized Jewish community. That was because the formal structures of the community…
The chants of “Free Alan Gross!” were unlikely to reach the ears of President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. But the gathering of several dozen activists outside the White House — on the fourth anniversary of the arrest of the Jewish American contractor in Cuba — highlighted a tactical shift in the movement for…
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