I am writing as the executive director of a network of kosher soup kitchens, as a Hasidic man and resident of Boro Park, Brooklyn, as a working American citizen who might be thought of as “uneducated” by secular standards, and as a Jew, to weigh in on the survey just released by UJA-Federation of New…
When Gitty Katz learned she was pregnant with twins earlier this winter, she was overcome with despair. The Williamsburg housewife, a devout Satmar, began to fantasize that that the babies would never be born. So, when Mrs. Katz miscarried, it was less a sense of grief than a strange and awful relief. Mrs. Katz already…
Is the Jewish tradition inherently liberal or inherently conservative? The answer to this much-debated question is in fact quite simple: yes. If by “the Jewish tradition” we mean the sacred texts of our people, they can be read to defend a very wide variety of approaches to the world of politics. You certainly won’t find…
Rebecca speaks four languages and has four degrees. She also has four children, no job and a house that is about to slip into foreclosure. “I could be on the street soon, with four kids,” said Rebecca, a 44-year-old divorcée, as she loaded two bags of Passover food into a friend’s car outside a pop-up…
Poor Jews, the saying goes, are middle-class Jews without money. The unstated assumption is that the conventional cultural standards of the middle class are not displaced by a “culture of poverty” when Jews tumble down the class ladder. It is, however, important to remember that some Jews — estimates vary, but a reasonable guess is…
Where shall we start? How about the fact that more than half the unemployed people in the United States have been out of work for more than 40 weeks? Or would you rather wrestle with the fact that we now have more than 46 million Americans living in poverty, half of them in abject poverty?…
A total settlement freeze in the West Bank still looks a long way off. But there is a scaling back of Israeli activity in another disputed area — the Golan Heights, where the Israel Defense Forces have halted operations on Mount Hermon. Is it a “confidence-building measure” requested by the U.S.? Or could it even…
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