Reminiscing on the golden days of Jewish American activism, two heroes of the Soviet Jewry movement took to the stage at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in its main plenary session on Monday. Natan Sharansky, the former refusnik who is now head of the Jewish Agency for Israel and Nobel…
In the first major post-election Jewish gathering, politics has been given a deliberately low profile. Instead, thousands of Jewish communal professionals gathered in Baltimore for the annual General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America were focused on social justice and tikkun olam, or repairing the world, as the conference opened. Issuing a strong…
The national umbrella organization for Jewish philanthropic federations has abolished its historic commitment to fund the Jewish community’s two largest overseas recipients by using a fixed longstanding formula. The move, taken by the Jewish Federations of North America at its annual General Assembly conference, will force the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Jewish…
Leaders of federated Jewish philanthropies agree almost unanimously that younger, under-50 Jewish donors—even those already committed to giving to Jewish causes—have little interested in giving to Israel, reports Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev in a blog post from the General Assembly of Jewish federations, now meeting in Denver. There is a general unease about giving to Israel,…
The annual meeting of Jewish federations kicked off exactly one year to the day before the 2012 general elections. But politics seemed to be an unwelcome guest at the event. The 3,000-strong audience gave a tepid response to a call from top Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz for the Jewish community to speak out on behalf…
Like Vladimir Putin, who can just don a wetsuit and emerge from a deep sea dive holding two sixth-century artifacts, there is apparently nothing Benjamin Netanyahu can’t do. Just read the seventh paragraph of this New York Times story, about the opening of the Metropolitan Museum’s new Islamic art galleries. It mentions a visit that…
Filling in for the President of the United States is a tough job for anyone, especially when the audience is made up of 3,000 Jewish activists eagerly anticipating the first address of the President Obama to a Jewish communal organization. But White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel managed to keep the crowd satisfied in…
Jerry Silverman, the new CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America (formerly known as United Jewish Communities), got involved in the Jewish world after a long career in the business world. That background showed at the opening press conference for this year’s General Assembly, where he suggested some ideas that seem as if they…
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