Religion & Jewish Life « AZ Jewish Post

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Religion & Jewish Life

Students at hte Ben Gamla Kendall charter school in Florida paint durning an artist's visit to the school. (Courtesy of Ben Gamla Kendall)

Jewish groups rethinking vouchers, tax credits to religious schools

Posted under Religion & Jewish Life on May 4th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

BOSTON (JTA) — When the U.S. Supreme Court effectively legalized school vouchers in 2002, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs called it “a devastating blow to one of the foundations of our democracy”: the separation of church and state. Four years earlier, JCPA had conducted a yearlong study that affirmed its opposition to vouchers. But [...]

Josh Breitzer, left, is invested as a cantor by Rabbi David Ellenson, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. (Photo Courtesy HUC-JIR)

What’s in a word? For ‘ordained’ rather than ‘invested’ cantors, a lot

Posted under Religion & Jewish Life on May 1st, 2012. Leave a Comment »

(JTA) — What’s the difference between investiture and ordination? Plenty, say officials at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which has announced that for the first time since establishing its cantorial school in 1948, it will ordain rather than invest its graduating class of cantors. Six graduates will be ordained Sunday in [...]

Arab and Israeli students holding hands at the Max Rayne Hand in Hand School for Bilingual Education in Jerusalem. (Kobi Gideon/Flash90/JTA)

At Yom Ha’atzmaut, school shows it’s OK for Jewish, Arab students to have differences

Posted under Israel, News, Religion & Jewish Life on April 25th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The two seventh-grade girls walk together down the hall, their heads touching as they talk excitedly. Dana’s dark auburn hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Waard’s head is covered by a hijab, the traditional Arab headscarf, held with a fashionable pin. Dana is Jewish and lives in the German Colony, a [...]

Seeking Kin: An IDF unit helps answer the cry, ‘Where is my son?’

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

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — On Jan. 3, 1948, Mordechai Levy, a resident of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City, disappeared. The 17-year-old’s parents, David and Yaffa, alerted British mandatory authorities and checked local hospitals, the chevra kadisha (burial society) and the Jewish Agency. [...]

For Lithuania, $50 million Holocaust compensation a step forward, but Jewish bitterness remains

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

NEW YORK (JTA) — Lithuania’s 800-year-old connection to its Jewish population broke down in 1941, when the Nazis invaded the country and murdered nearly all of its 200,000 Jews – often with the complicity of local Lithuanians. This month, 70 years on, Lithuania finally passed historic compensation legislation to provide some $50 million in compensation [...]

Young Jews entering the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp in Poland during the 2010 March of the Living. (March of Living International)

Marking 25 years, March of the Living uniting survivors with liberators in Poland

Posted under Religion & Jewish Life, World on April 18th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Bernhard Storch grew up in a Jewish family in Silesia, near Poland’s border with Germany. Like many Polish Jews, he moved quickly from town to town as the Nazis advanced in 1939, trying to avoid capture. Before long he was caught and sent to a brutal labor camp. On July 23, [...]

Eva Vavrecka contemplating the horrific living conditions that her mother and grandparents endured in the forest to survive World War II. (Bruce Konviser)

YOM HASHOAH FEATURE: Monument honors helpers of Czech Jewish family that hid in woods from Nazis

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

TRSICE, Czech Republic (JTA) — Nearly 70 years after a Czech Jewish family sought refuge from the Nazis by retreating into a nearby forest and relying on non-Jewish locals for help, an American high school teacher has helped erect a permanent monument to their memory. Last week, several dozen people went to the wooded site [...]

Sharon Azrieli-Perez, a Candian-born opera singer, performs "Turandot" with the New Israel Opera in 2008. (sharonazrieli.com)

Scion of Azrieli family goes from opera to cantor, and back

Posted under Arts and Culture, Religion & Jewish Life on April 17th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

NEW YORK (JTA) — When Sharon Azrieli-Perez told her father — David Azrieli, one of Israel’s biggest real estate moguls — that she wanted to be an opera singer, he told her he’d pay for voice lessons only if she got into Juilliard. That was all the motivation she needed. “There was a fire in [...]

After 21 years, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is retiring as Britain's chief rabbi. (United Synagogue)

With Sacks retiring, British Jews mixed on relevancy of chief rabbi

Posted under News, Religion & Jewish Life, World on April 16th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

(JTA) — The search to replace Britain’s powerful longtime chief rabbi has gone international, but even as resumes are gathered and interviews conducted, some are questioning whether the position is still relevant and what it means today for the Anglo Jewish community. As chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks brought international attention to the post as [...]

OBITUARY: Elan Steinberg described as ‘great activist’ and ‘irreplaceable loss to world Jewry’

Posted under National, News, Obituaries, Religion & Jewish Life on April 16th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

(JTA) — Tributes and statements of profound respect and admiration are pouring in for Elan Steinberg, former executive director of the World Jewish Congress, who died April 6 of complications from lymphatic cancer. He was 59. “Elan’s premature death will leave a huge void in the Jewish world,” said WJC President Ronald Lauder, who called [...]