With more than $1 million in funding and with conferences in Israel, America, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and, soon, Moldova, Limmud FSU may have achieved the impossible: a way of making Jewishness attractive to young Russian-speaking Jews around the world. But in order to succeed, the 6-year-old organization has had to bend Limmud’s rules — some…
The mystery surrounding President Washington’s famous 1790 letter guaranteeing religious liberty in America continues. As the Forward revealed last week, Washington’s letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I., disappeared from public view almost a decade ago, after the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum, where the letter had been displayed for half a century,…
The formation in June of a Jewish-Latino congressional caucus heralded hopes for a new era of cooperation between the two minority groups. The alliance was inspired in part by the recognition of the greater political influence that Hispanic Americans are bound to wield as their population rises. But in Los Angeles, that demographic surge looks…
Like many synagogues, Congregation Beit Simchat Torah — New York’s only lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender synagogue — takes its members on a mission to Israel. Many other American synagogue missions focus on the Jewish state’s political and security challenges, and spend significant time touring Israel’s holy sites. But the recent two-week trip of CBST…
Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match. And make it fast. Risa Demato, site director for the Weisman Delray Community Center, heard the call and she answered it. Quickly. “A lot of people came to me and said, ‘You need to have a singles group,’” says Demato, who launched a weekly series of senior speed-dating events…
When most of us think of Jewish heritage travel, places like Jerusalem or the Warsaw Ghetto come to mind. Yet, from the pre-Inquisition sites that dot Spain, to farming villages in South America, hundreds of forgotten or under-visited Jewish sites exist across the world. When we put out the call for recommendations of our readers’…
Changing demographic realities are pushing Jewish activists to seek a political partnership with Latinos, America’s fastest-growing minority group, for help in supporting the U.S.-Israel relationship. At the same time, Latinos are seeking stronger Jewish support for immigration reform. But it remains to be seen just how, when and to what extent each side may be…
In this week’s Forward Reporters’ Roundtable, host Josh Nathan-Kazis sits down with Jane Eisner, editor of the Forward, and staff writer Paul Berger to discuss how a famous letter from George Washington promising religious pluralism ended up in a warehouse in suburban Maryland. Then, Josh speaks with Forward Fellow Naomi Zeveloff about the redistricting efforts…
Rep. Anthony Weiner, the besmirched New York Democrat who admitted to a series of explicit online exchanges with six different women, announced his resignation June 16 at a senior center in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. “I’m here to apologize for the personal mistakes I have made and the embarrassment that I have caused,” said Weiner, who…
The synagogue where Lauren Spierer became a bat mitzvah, and the Jewish campus center that she frequented are among the groups leading the effort to find the Indiana University sophomore, who has been missing for nearly two weeks. Police say that the 20-year-old Spierer was last seen walking home from a friend’s apartment in the…
When the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education was founded in 1997, it had commitments of $18 million from a dozen leading Jewish philanthropists, and it had lofty goals: to create 25 new Jewish day schools and to double the percentage of non-Orthodox students who attend all Jewish day schools. Fourteen years later, PEJE’S founding…
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