It’s no secret that American Jews and their Israeli counterparts have less in common with every passing day. But where you locate the source of that chasm depends on which side of the Atlantic you’re standing on. For American Jews, Israel’s dispossession of Palestinian civil rights, the monopoly of the ultra-Orthodox over religious matters, and…
On December 2, Sir Clive Gillinson, executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall, married the lawyer Anya Deutsch in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony in downtown New York, to the strains of the theme from Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” played by an orchestral ensemble. On such a joyous occasion, one might wonder about the choice of…
See the helicopter, hovering low above a grassy field ringed with children jonesing for a sugar rush. Watch pounds and pounds of gelt — chocolate coins in metallic foil — dumped out of said helicopter. Observe the children descend on the fallen gelt like Israelites on manna from heaven. If you happen to be in…
Raji Sabateen, 56, lives in the village of Husan in the Palestinian West Bank, a place where few Israelis dare to visit. But over the past five months, thousands of Israelis have spent time inside Sabateen’s home through the power of virtual reality. Sabateen’s home is featured at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum as part of “Eye…
As in his earlier hit “Body and Soul” (1948), John Garfield’s final film “He Ran All the Way” (1951) begins with the actor waking up from an apparently very unpleasant dream. While the return from a nightmare is not an uncommon twist in those older Hollywood movies that veer into darker territory — the familiar…
What does Rabbi Aviad Bodner, leader of Manhattan’s historic Stanton Street Shul, which seats 400, have in common with televangelist mega-preachers whose sermons reach millions of people around the world? All get a tax break on their housing costs — despite the fact that Bodner rents a two-bedroom in Manhattan’s East Village with his wife…
Years from now, October 27, 2018, may be remembered as an inflection point in the way America regards its Jews, and in the way that Jews regard themselves. The brutal murders of 11 congregants at prayer in the supposed safety of a synagogue demolished any lingering, quixotic notion that anti-Semitism in this country had been…
Congregation Shaarai Shomayim, in Lancaster, PA, is one of the oldest continually operating congregations in North America. Its cemetery has graves from the colonial period. Its sisterhood was founded in 1894. But when that sisterhood decided a couple years ago to try to attract younger members, they changed their name — the Temple Sisterhood became…
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