For Shabbat dinner last week, Daniel Sayani planned to eat rice and beans. He consulted Jewish law to determine the minimum amounts of bread and grape juice needed to bless the Friday night meal. Since his budget was just $1.50, saying the prayer over wine was out of the question. Sayani chose to live on…
Jerusalem in early September is a restless place. The streets still emanate waves of trapped desert heat into the air. It’s the brief lull between Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah, but the Old City is alive with the sounds of chanting, clanging bells and calls to prayer. I am just outside of the Damascus Gate, which…
As we wound our way through the rebel-controlled neighborhoods of the decimated streets of Aleppo, I could hardly recognize what was once one of Syria’s most prosperous cities. This part of Syria’s second-largest metropolis, a town once storied for its ethnic diversity, was now a pockmarked jumble of cratered ruins, even as life in government-controlled…
Honoree Ron Perelman Praises Hebrew Home at Riverdale at 95th Anniversary Dinner As harp and violin music played gently in the background, the buzz among the 500 black-tie guests at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale Foundation’s 95th anniversary dinner, which, held on November 11, raised $2.2 million, was about the devastation inflicted by Hurricane Sandy….
Cardinal Elia Angelo Dalla Costa, the World War II-era Archbishop of Florence, has been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. In an announcement issued Monday, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem said Dalla Costa was recognized as a righteous gentile earlier this year “for spearheading the rescue of hundreds of Jews in Florence during the Holocaust.” Dalla…
On the surface, it appears to be a historic gain for Reform Jewry in Europe. Ec Chaim, a congregation identified as Progressive – the European term for Conservative or Reform – is set to join the Orthodox-led umbrella organization of Warsaw’s Jewish community. Poland’s chief Orthodox rabbi is hailing the move as a potential model…
Devorah Krinsky, the wife of Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, secretary to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, has died. Krinsky died at her home in Brooklyn on Nov. 23, after the Friday night Kiddush was recited at her bedside, surrounded by her family, at the age of 74, according to Chabad.org. Krinsky’s childhood home was…
Another major Jewish organization in Australia is embroiled in a child sex abuse scandal, adding to the trauma triggered by recent revelations of similar cases involving students at two schools in Melbourne, run by Chabad and Adass Israel, respectively. Because of a suppression order issued by an Australian court, the name of the organization, the…
As New Jersey’s shore residents struggle to rebuild destroyed homes and lives after Hurricane Sandy, Rabbi Ellen S. Wolintz-Fields has seen a peculiar aspect of the crisis firsthand: Her tiny congregation has only grown in influence as the long-term impact of the storm’s destructive force deepens. Wolintz-Fields, spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Israel here, presides…
Brownsville, Brooklyn is perhaps most famous as a rough neighborhood and the birthplace of boxer Mike Tyson, but in the 1940s and 1950s the community was home to a large Jewish community. In this podcast reporter Jon Kalish rides along with the late Greg Jackson, a former basketball player who was born and raised in…
As the death toll from the Israel-Gaza conflict climbed, a group of Muslims and Jews met at the Kehilat Sephardim Bukharian Jewish Center, in Queens. Instead of talking about the violence consuming the Middle East, the group focused on the mundane at the November 18 meeting: Jewish concerns about a Muslim school poised to open…
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