On a sunny November afternoon in downtown Johannesburg, Samuel Radebe, a pastor and self-proclaimed prophet, sat on a chair draped in a leopard skin and exorcised demons. One man, rail thin in a tattered yellow shirt, writhed violently in front of Radebe on the floor as his wife shakily explained into a microphone that he…
Asylum-seekers Detained in Israel’s Desert from Jewish Daily Forward on Vimeo. Israel’s Parliament has passed a new law aimed at keeping African immigrants behind bars — and a controversial jail to house them open — beyond a deadline set by the country’s highest court. The Knesset by a 43-20 vote approved an initial legislative step…
(JTA) — President Obama did not mention Jews once in his Nov. 20 speech announcing immigration reforms, but he ended with a flourish that would be immediately recognizable to anyone who has sat through a Passover seder. “Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger –…
After sounding a collective oy vey over the Republican landslide, Jewish communal activists began looking for ways to make lemonade out of what they perceive as lemons delivered by voters in the midterm elections. Hopes of liberal-leaning activists to see comprehensive immigration reform, voting rights legislation or increased funding for safety network programs have been…
I’ve loved train travel ever since I was a small child. For the summer trips we made from Moscow to visit Tuapse, a town on the shore of the Black Sea where my grandparents lived, I shared a four-berth compartment with my parents. We would eat boiled eggs, tomatoes and cucumbers we had packed, discuss…
In my parents’ basement I found a box of my grandfather’s, marked “C.J. Wildman, personal”; inside it I discovered another, smaller file box labeled “Patient Correspondence, A–G.” The letters were not from patients; they were from the life he left behind in Vienna when he fled the Nazis: half-siblings, cousins, friends — and a girlfriend….
(JTA) — For the first time in four decades, Miami Jewry is growing. That’s the official finding of the new Miami Jewish population study released Monday by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. The Jewish population of Miami-Dade County increased 9 percent over the last decade, to 123,000 from 113,000 in 2004, according to the survey. That…
Reform rabbis are contacting Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in an attempt to delay the deportation of undocumented workers. Rabbis Organizing Rabbis partnered with immigration advocacy organizations to ask the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to exercise discretion when deciding whether or not to deport anyone, according to a statement issued Wednesday by the…
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