Religion & Jewish Life « AZ Jewish Post

The Robert M. Beren Academy in Houston is open to kids 18 months old and all the way through high school. (Courtesy Robert M. Beren Academy)

Orthodox Union has found solution to Orthodoxy’s problems: Houston

Posted under Religion & Jewish Life on February 3rd, 2012. Leave a Comment »

NEW YORK (JTA) – With day school tuition fees on the rise, New York housing costs among the highest in the nation and the job market still tough, the Orthodox Union has a solution for Orthodox Jews under pressure: Move to Houston. In a first-of-its-kind partnership for the organization, the OU is working with some prominent [...]

Baltimore area mourns Jewish airman killed in Afghanistan

Posted under National, Religion & Jewish Life on January 24th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

BALTIMORE (Baltimore Jewish Times) — On his Facebook page, Airman 1st Class Matthew Ryan Seidler posted the lyrics to one of his favorite tunes, “Opportunity” by Australian singer-songwriter Pete Murray. “Your coffee’s warm but your milk is sour/Life is short but you’re here to flower,” the lyrics state. “Dream yourself along another day/Never miss opportunity.” [...]

Suburban N.J. synagogue creates a big-city service

Posted under Religion & Jewish Life on January 24th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

(New Jersey Jewish News) — It’s a familiar story: Kids grow up in a suburban synagogue, move to the big city and leave the synagogue behind. What’s a congregation to do? How about bring the synagogue to the big city? That’s the thinking behind the monthly Friday night services being held in Manhattan by Temple [...]

With new restaurant at Canyons, kosher food debuts at U.S. ski resort

Posted under Arts and Culture, Religion & Jewish Life on January 24th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

PARK CITY, Utah (JTA) – Kosher food isn’t something one generally associates with ski resorts, and Utah isn’t a place known for its Jewish population. But after Canyons, the state’s largest ski resort, opened the nation’s first ski-area, glatt kosher restaurant this season, the Jews came. And ate. And they were satisfied. “Response has been [...]

Mollie Darmon, left, and Allie Lichterman, seniors at Frankel Jewish Academy in suburban Detroit, using their iPads in class. (Frankel Jewish Academy)

Jewish day schools putting Apple iPads to the test

Posted under Religion & Jewish Life on January 24th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (JTA) – Toward the end of his life, Apple’s visionary leader, Steve Jobs, was visited by another computer innovator, Microsoft’s Bill Gates. The conversation turned to the future of education. As related in Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of Jobs, both men agreed that computers had made surprisingly little impact on schools. “Computers and [...]

Park City shul is popular venue for Sundance films — and ski-in Shabbat services

Posted under Arts and Culture, Religion & Jewish Life on January 24th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

PARK CITY, Utah (JTA) – Call it the Sundance Synaplex. This week, crowds of people will be flocking several times a day to Temple Har Shalom in this picturesque ski town, but they won’t be coming for Shacharit, Mincha or Maariv services. Instead, for 10 days the synagogue is serving as one of the venues [...]

Filipinos light Chanukah candles in their home in South Tel Aviv on Nov. 24, 2010 in advance of the Jewish holiday. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90/JTA)

Young Filipinos integrating into Israeli society, but not without difficulties

Posted under Israel, News, Religion & Jewish Life on January 23rd, 2012. Leave a Comment »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — With eyes closed, it would have been difficult to guess that the female voice with the amazing range singing a Hebrew classic was a shy-looking, 11-year-old Filipina. But there was Kathleen Eligado performing Miri Aloni’s “Ballad of Hedva and Shlomik” before a prime-time television audience of a million Israelis. Eligado, born [...]

Seeking Kin: Man hidden as baby hopes to honor rescuer-father

Posted under Religion & Jewish Life, World on January 17th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

JTA’s new “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — Even after seven decades, Peter Nurnberger’s most basic biographical facts remain elusive. The Slovakian doesn’t know his birth date, his natural parents’ fate or whether they had any other children. Peter’s adoptive parents hid him during the Shoah in [...]

Gustav Zoltay, left, the director of the Federation o Hungarian Jewish communities, and Peter Feldmajor, its president, at the founding of the new Hungarian Jewish Congress. (Szabolcs Panyi)

In Budapest, corruption probe amplifies calls for reform of communal institutions

Posted under News, Religion & Jewish Life, World on January 15th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

BUDAPEST (JTA) – A whistle-blowing rabbi and a reform-minded lay leader are at the forefront of new efforts to shake up Hungary’s entrenched Jewish establishment. Late last year, Rabbi Zoltan Radnoti reportedly alerted authorities to complaints of embezzlement and tax fraud in the operation of Budapest’s main Jewish cemetery on Kozma Street. This led to a police [...]

Reporter Alex Weisler, second from right, and his mother, second from left, unite with lost relatives in Ukraine. (Alex Weisler)

Reporter’s Notebook: Return to shtetl gives texture to reporter’s family history

Posted under Religion & Jewish Life, World on January 14th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

LVIV, Ukraine (JTA) — The more I thought about it, the more it began to seem like a reasonable choice: I would roam around Europe for six months, visiting Jewish museums, talking to youth groups and covering various community happenings. I would travel from vibrant London to the post-Communist countries of the Eastern Bloc. But [...]