Defying predictions, America’s Jewish federations mustered to mount an unabashed show of strength when they gathered in Jerusalem November 10 for the annual General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA). It wasn’t exactly the sort of defiance their Israeli hosts were accustomed to seeing at an American Jewish philanthropists’ convention. Prime Minister…
(JTA) — When it’s held in Israel once every five years, the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly aims to focus on challenges and opportunities facing the Jewish state. In large part, this year was no exception. Israel’s president, prime minister and other prominent politicians addressed the crowd. Sessions covered Israel’s foreign and domestic…
Jerusalem is having an unusually mild fall. November began amid sunny skies, temperatures in the high 60s, light breezes and just the slightest hint of feathery drizzle to announce that after a bone-dry October, the rainy season was finally about to return. Diaspora Jews are returning too. No, not the waves of immigration that generations…
During a recent visit to the Forward’s newsroom, Jerry Silverman, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, was brimming with enthusiasm for the upcoming annual gathering of local Jewish charity federations nationwide, known as the General Assembly, which will take place this year not in the United States, but in Jerusalem. The…
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas met with a group of prominent American Jews in New York Monday evening for a dialogue over a dinner of trout and saffron rice. Also on the menu were servings of hope, flattery, mutual frustration and a just soupcon of evident peace-process exhaustion and perhaps a hint of unstated despair. Abbas,…
Calling on the federation system to join synagogues in a fight against religious discrimination in Israel, Reform leader Rabbi Rick Jacobs aimed to engage the broader Jewish community in the struggle for equality of non-Orthodox Jewish denominations in Israel. Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, described Israel as “the only democracy that legally…
It was hardly surprising that Israeli diplomat Barukh Binah refused several times to discuss the nitty-gritty of plans to confront Iran over its nuclear program at a public forum at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly. Neither was the lack of optimism voiced by any of the three panelists that increased sanctions against…
With President Barack Obama’s reelection only a few days in the rear view mirror, the topic of the Jewish role in American politics is still brewing — and we learned some tantalizing details about Mitt Romney’s summer trip to Israel. Democratic and Republican operatives sparred over the importance of the Jewish vote in the just-completed…
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