Conservative Judaism’s membership rolls are in free fall. According to a strategic plan for renewal issued in February by the denomination’s congregational arm, the number of families served by synagogues belonging to what was once American Judaism’s leading stream has shrunk by 14% since 2001. In the denomination’s Northeast region, the number of families has…
There are really two revolts going on here in Egypt. The first and most publicized abroad and, to a lesser degree, even here, is a revolt for a free political system — the release of political prisoners, a free press, constitutional reform that would allow free and fair elections and set limits on time spent…
When I started working on my history of the Soviet Jewry movement almost seven years ago, the task seemed overwhelming. I was a young writer, just 27, attempting to tell an epic story that took place over three decades (mostly before I was born), involved a cast of thousands and demanded I describe how the…
In American Jewish memory, the Jewish National Fund’s historic blue pushkes, or charity boxes, evoke warm images of hard-earned pennies given to the group’s mission of redeeming the Land of Israel through planting trees. But to the Bedouin of Al-Arakib, a village in the Negev, the group’s current forestation plans mean the destruction of their…
As developments in Egypt move many Israelis to become more wary of a peace process that will require them to give up occupied land and Jewish settlements on the West Bank, Palestinian advocates for a two-state solution in Washington are struggling to persuade Israel’s supporters that the opposite is true. For the American Task Force…
Although proponents of democracy can only be excited by the prospect of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak leaving office after a 30-year dictatorship, they also fear that a possible successor in leadership of the country of 80 million could be worse — not only for Egypt, but for Israel. But despite alarms about the Muslim Brotherhood…
Thirty-two-year-old writer and humorist Sloane Crosley has published two books of essays on topics ranging from what not to do in the office (bake cookies shaped like the boss) to how to attend an Alaskan wedding (armed with the definition of “scat”; it means “bear feces”). In this Yid Lit Podcast, she talks about her…
Foreign aid to Israel is one of those issues that serve all political sides well. This was demonstrated in recent weeks by the latest uproar over the suggestion by Rand Paul, the recently elected U.S. Senator from Kentucky, to cut U.S. aid to Israel. For Paul, who mentioned in a CNN interview that he supports…
When it comes to chocolate, I have enjoyed something of a fairytale childhood. Chicago, where I grew up, has long been a center of candy manufacturing — at one time simultaneously home to the buttercream chocolates of Fannie May, Dove’s chocolate-dipped ice cream bar, and Frango’s ethereal mint-chocolate meltaways. Some afternoons, when the wind blew…
My grandmother Anna Soltzberg (née Seiger) occasionally called her grandchildren foyl (lazy). She lived at our house for a while. I called her Bub — short for bubbe. I wasn’t going to call her Bubbe. Too effeminate. Bub was not into baseball; she was into the card game casino, the television show “Queen for a…
With nine-term Jewish congresswoman Jane Harman stepping down Congress is loosing a key pro-Israel voice and one of its leading Democratic centrists. Harman’s close ties with the pro-Israel lobby made her a subject of a 2006 FBI wiretap in which she was allegedly asked by an Israeli agent to intervene on behalf of two former…
