About a year ago I got a phone call out of the blue from a woman who was breathless with excitement over an article I had written for Hadassah magazine about the Jewish experience in World War I. “Do you have a minute?” she asked, identifying herself as 85-year-old Elsie Shemin Roth of St. Louis….
The only whiff of anti-Semitism that I experienced during my campaign for governor of Vermont took the form of a reporter’s question. He asked my campaign manager Liz Bankowski: “How are you going to deal with Madeleine Kunin’s liabilities?” “What liabilities?” Liz asked. “Well, she’s a woman, a democrat and she’s Jewish.” Liz thought for…
1) 5,285 Jews live in Vermont. 2) The interior of the so-called Lost Shul of Burlington (better known as the Chai Adam synagogue) was painted in 1910 by Ben Zion Black and is currently in the process of being restored. 3) In 1977, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened the first Ben & Jerry’s Homemade…
In the burgeoning U.S. economy of the 19th century, pioneering merchants ventured West to target the ambitious fortune-seekers of the Gold Rush. They went beyond California’s borders, supplying goods to the rapidly growing sugar and coffee plantations of Hawaii. With their foreign manners, the English and German Jewish merchants making the journey were easily identifiable….
The morning of the annual Old Mission Hills Fourth of July Party, I warned Adharsh, my boyfriend at the time who was visiting from New Orleans, about what to expect.” “We’re kind of going to stick out,” I said. “My family, I mean. We always do.” “Speak for yourself,” he said, grinning. “I came prepared.”…
Gamblers know that the house always wins — except, as some Jewish charities are learning the hard way, when it doesn’t. Federal tax law and state gaming regulations allow some charities to play pit boss, taking bets on games like bingo and poker to fill their charitable coffers. But thanks in part to the economic…
Jewish charity goes largely to Israel-related groups. Our readers think that’s a bad idea. Last week, as part of our ongoing investigation into Jewish charity finances, we asked you how you thought Jewish charitable dollars should be spent. The results, embedded below, suggest that Forward respondents think that education-related Jewish charities should get the largest…
Do the spending priorities of American Jewish charities match those of American Jews? Judging by an informal but highly revealing poll of Forward readers, the answer is no. As in NO. As in: spend more money on education, culture and community, about the same on general advocacy and much less on Israel. The Forward’s poll…
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