JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
He’s the bassist for a Jewish spiritual community, an inventor of cutting edge technologies for the blind and now: a MacArthur Genius. This week, the MacArthur Foundation announced Joshua A. Miele as a 2021 fellow. The fellowships, commonly called the “Genius Awards,” come with $625,000 over five years, with no strings attached, and are given…
There’s a limit to what any one person can accomplish in her time on earth. Marcia Freedman managed to blow right past the limit and just kept going. Pioneering feminist, LGBTQ activist, Knesset member, author and co-founder of an esteemed Middle East peace organization, Marcia Freedman died Sept. 21 in Berkeley. She was 83. “She…
The crush is in full swing in Northern California, which in the age of COVID-19 means one thing for the congregants of Congregation Beth Israel: time to leave the parking lot. For months beginning last spring, about 20 men and women from the region’s largest Orthodox synagogue would arrive at the large parking lot of…
Updated Aug. 14 at 10:00 a.m. Last fall, Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union made history by inaugurating its first non-Christian president — an Orthodox-trained rabbi — to lead the esteemed consortium for the advanced study of religion. The ceremony took place on Oct. 24 at UC Berkeley’s International House, where Rabbi Daniel Lehmann delivered his inaugural…
The UC Berkeley Jewish community put out a letter condemning anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist remarks made at a recent student government meeting, The Daily Californian reported. The student government was meeting Wednesday after deciding to disqualify candidates from the Student Action party from elections after discovering campaign finance violations, according to The Daily Californian. But one…
(JTA) — A resident of Berkeley, California brought a fake bomb with “anti-Jewish writings” on the package into the University of California Berkeley Police Department. Michael Fleming, 48, was charged last week with sending a false bomb, designed to cause fear for ones’ safety. He was not charged with a hate crime despite the words…
The Forward recently published their second annual College Guide for Jewish Students. As the outgoing Student Activities Director at Harvard Hillel, I am honored that Harvard was tied for the #1 campus for Jewish life. I am also uncomfortable with the fact this news brought me joy. I admire the Forward’s efforts in providing Jewish…
A professor at the University of California, Berkeley has apologized for sharing Twitter memes that the university said “crossed the line” into anti-Semitism. Hatem Bazian, a lecturer in the department of ethnic studies, retweeted a status with two offending images. One showed an Orthodox Jewish man smiling and raising his arms above the caption: “I…
