When Cantor Angela Buchdahl walks among the pews, greeting congregants before Friday night services at Manhattan’s venerable Central Synagogue, she encounters a mélange of Jewish faces, including blacks, Asians and Hispanics. It’s a diversity that reflects the emergence of an American Jewry of unprecedented ethnic breadth, and a diversity that Buchdahl — born to an…
Over the past 6 months being a part of the Jewish Greening Fellowship has been a game changer for Kane Street Synagogue and for my work here. Many people at the synagogue were already passionate about the environment and sustainability, but we lacked direction. We felt like our concerns were peripheral to the educational and…
On a recent Friday afternoon in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach, groups of teenage girls headed toward the ocean as shirtless men on boardwalk benches sent occasional catcalls their way and children walked by licking ice cream cones. For much of this seaside neighborhood of Russian immigrants, the rites of summer appear unchanged nine months after Hurricane…
The Conservative movement’s umbrella group, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, has laid off a total of 12 full-time and part-time employees, the Forward has learned. Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO of the USCJ, said the reductions, about 10% of the staff, would save the organization about $1 million annually — about the size of its…
Six months after Hurricane Sandy damaged at least 72 synagogues in New York and New Jersey, only two report having been approved for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a Forward spot survey indicates. The need for such aid does not appear to have abated. Though many congregations have cleaned the debris and are…
Washington D.C.’s Sixth & I Historic Synagogue is hoping to follow in the footsteps of Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim by winning a coveted Partners in Preservation grant to repair its century-old stained glass windows. Sixth & I has been chosen to be among 24 finalists competing for a portion of $1 million. Since 2006, Partners…
The hunt is on for a rabbi to lead one of the Reform movement’s most prominent congregations. Rabbi Peter Rubinstein informed congregants of Manhattan’s Central Synagogue that he will step down from his post as senior rabbi at the end of June, 2014. “What will be a 23-year season of my rabbinate at Central Synagogue…
Forward Looking Back brings you the stories that were making news in the Forward’s Yiddish paper 100, 75, and 50 years ago. Check back each week for a new set of illuminating and edifying clippings from the Jewish past. 100 Years Ago 1913 Eighteen-year-old Esther Goldberg, a pretty girl who lives at 20 Pitt Street…
ווען חנה האָט אויסגעפֿונען אַז סטיוו איז, ווי זי, פֿון מישיגען, זענען זיי גיך געוואָרן גוטע פֿרײַנד.
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