As you read this, a massive organized movement is making history across the U.S. — and you probably haven’t heard about it. That movement is the largest prison strike in the nation’s history. Inmates in at least 40 prisons across 24 states have organized the strike through an extensive underground network, connecting through allies on the…
On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed. So begins the poem “Unetaneh Tokef,” which is recited on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I have always struggled with this poem. The very literal translation speaks to an intervening God, one who is ready to stand in judgement and hand down…
The United Nations will for the first time recognize Yom Kippur as an official holiday. Starting in 2016, no official meetings will take place on the Jewish day of atonement at the international body’s New York headquarters, and Jewish employees there will be able to miss work without using vacation hours, the Times of Israel…
My father, a first-generation American, was an accountant, which is relevant because he was a sedentary, chubby, somewhat bookish man who never tossed a ball with me, not once, and who paid no attention to Major League Baseball. When I was growing up in the 1960s, there were millions of Jewish fathers who were accountants…
Film star Michael Douglas delivered a speech at a temple in a New York City suburb on Yom Kippur. Douglas — who this summer received the Genesis Prize, informally known as the “Jewish Nobel” — spoke to more than 1,000 worshipers Tuesday night at Temple Shaaray Tefila, the New York Post reported. In his 20-minute…
A Chicago news station used a graphic of a yellow badge, like those the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust, to illustrate its report on Yom Kippur. WGN-TV aired the report on Tuesday night, hours into the Jewish Day of Atonement. The badge — shaped like the Star of David and featuring the…
President Barack Obama said Yom Kippur was a time of hope and also of being honest with oneself. “The Day of Atonement is a time for humility, reflection and repentance, a chance to be honest with ourselves and one another about our shortcomings,” he said in a message sent out about two hours before East…
(JTA) — It was nearly midnight Saturday, and Jayson Littman was milling about an upscale Manhattan nightclub greeting friends with a wide smile and often a big hug. Standing alongside a “shot boy” — clad only in underwear, a kippah and Star of David necklace — he offered partygoers shots of Manischewitz in plastic cups….
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