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…
Journalist Haviv Rettig Gur recently noted in ejewishphilanthropy.com that just two of the 19 largest Jewish federations in North America are headed by women. This is worth highlighting, particularly as the Jewish Federation of North America’s General Assembly gets down to business today in Baltimore (it runs through November 13). The presently dismal rate of…
The books, with such titles as “The Negro and Organized Labor” and “Who’s Who in World Jewry, 1965,” stretched in rows more than 50 feet down the hallway of a Manhattan office building. Hundreds more publications, on topics such as race, religion, civil rights, terrorism and the Holocaust, were clustered in empty adjoining offices, spread…
Despite promises to overhaul the way American Jews direct their contributions for causes in Israel and overseas, the Jewish Federations of North America is struggling to change the system. An ambitious reform plan approved last year recently suffered a setback with the resignation of Joanne Moore, the top professional in charge of its implementation. With…
The Jewish community reacted with a mix of disappointment and relief when the much-hyped congressional supercommittee announced that it couldn’t reach a deal on debt reduction. On the one hand, Jewish organizations hoped for a bipartisan plan that would address the nation’s growing debt. But on the other hand, some groups worried that the budget-cutting…
What do Jewish boxer Dmitriy Salita, ophthalmologist Stephen Kutner and Rabbi Celso Cukierkorn have in common? They are among 20 semifinalists in the second annual Jewish Community Heroes campaign. Organized by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the campaign celebrates men and women who selflessly and wholeheartedly devote their lives to helping others. Over…
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…
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