Ruth Messinger and I were sitting in synagogue talking, as is our custom (much to the dismay of the rabbi, my husband). She and I get a lot done in between praying on Shabbat mornings, and it isn’t all gossip. This was during the height of the crisis in Darfur. Ruth had brought American Jewish…
The overseas aid and development group American Jewish World Service plans to lay off its community organizing staff two years after announcing a new focus on political advocacy to support its mission. Stuart Schear, the group’s vice president for communications, said that while AJWS was able to raise millions of dollars targeted for overseas aid,…
Jodie Rivas, 23, shows scars caused by stab wounds in Nicaragua / Getty Images What does it mean to be a man in the world? This question looms large in public life, especially on the heels of Twitter’s recent #YesAllWomen campaign — a social media initiative that drew attention to the prevalence of violence, harassment…
Burmese girls at school in Thailand’s Mae La refugee camp / Getty Images Even though I was raised in a Washington, D.C. suburb, I never spent much time in the district and definitely never toured the White House. But last month, I joined 150 Jewish activists from 18 states to lobby my elected officials to…
The American Jewish World Service called on the Obama administration to pull ambassadors from Uganda and Nigeria because of what it says are escalating anti-gay and other repressive measures by those governments. In a statement, AJWS asked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday to bring ambassadors from those two African countries back to…
There’s something incredibly powerful about stepping, a form of percussive dance in which the participant’s entire body is used as an instrument to produce complex rhythms and sounds through a mixture of footsteps, spoken words and hand claps. These rhythmic stomping and beats can have a profound effect on the listener as well as the…
With Passover around the corner, many of us are poised to recite the words, “Let all who are hungry come and eat.” But when nearly 1 billion people around the world are hungry or malnourished, these words become acutely daunting—particularly for communities recovering from disasters. More than three years after a major earthquake ravaged Haiti,…
If you’re Jewish, and into food, and not outraged, then you’re not paying attention. Americans like to think of ourselves as a generous people, and we are – even though special interests transform much of our international food aid programs into a wasteful boondoggle that undermines the abilities of communities and countries in Africa, Asia…
100% of profits support our journalism
