On a Sunday morning in late November, around 250 people fill the dark brown wooden pews of the Vilna Shul in Boston. A synagogue built by Jewish immigrants from Lithuania in 1919 on Phillips Street in the central Beacon Hill neighborhood, it closed in 1985, and then reopened as a cultural center in the early…
1) Massachusetts has a Jewish population of roughly 278,000, accounting for 4.2% of the state population (which is twice the national average), and 4.1% of the total Jewish population in the United States. 2) Solomon Franco, a merchant who arrived from Holland in 1649, is Boston’s first recorded Jewish resident. However, he was not allowed…
Two Jewish candidates were defeated in the Democratic primary for Massachusetts governor. Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, on Tuesday defeated Steve Grossman, the state treasurer and Don Berwick, a former administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Coakley, who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2010, garnered 42 percent of…
(JTA) — Alan Dershowitz’s house is a bit of a mess. Most of the rooms in his Martha’s Vineyard home are cluttered with half-unpacked boxes filled with items from his Cambridge house, which he and his wife emptied recently and sold after he retired from his Harvard Law School professorship in June. Dershowitz himself wears a…
Steve Grossman, the former chair of AIPAC and one-time head of the Democratic National Committee, is one of two Democratic Jewish candidates for Massachusetts governor on the primary ballot. Grossman, Massachusetts State Treasurer, and Don Berwick, a one-time pediatrician and former Medicare chief, qualified for the primary ballot in voting by party delegates at the…
Ten years ago, shortly after midnight on May 17, 2004, a jubilant Arthur Lipkin and his longtime partner descended the stone steps of Cambridge City Hall clutching a marriage license application. It was a historic night of revelry and celebration, as Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to allow same-sex couples to legally…
A judicial nominee for a seat on the top state court in Massachusetts was rejected in part because he had taken leadership positions with the Anti-Defamation League. Attorney Joseph Berman, who was nominated by Gov. Deval Patrick for a judgeship on the Massachusetts Superior Court, lost his bid in a tie vote of 4-4 by…
There’s Johnny Rotten laughing that he doesn’t remember the words while the rhythm kicks and drives. The bass is muddled but insistent, louder with every measure, angry that no one’s joined in. Johnny yells to stop so that someone can feed him his lines. The volume drops, but the band never does. Suddenly this song,…
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