Yearly Archives 2011

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Yom Kippur, the fourth quarter of the High Holidays, is coming and time is running out. Our seats are waiting, the gates are closing. Each year we look for a new way to prep for the day: Could football offer a strategy? Though Yom Kippur… Read more »

NEW YORK (MyJewishLearning) — For most adults, the central experience of Yom Kippur is fasting. By abstaining from food and drink, we exercise control over our bodies and do not give in to our most basic impulses. This makes it pretty easy to feel the “affliction” that the Torah… Read more »

JTA is introducing a new column, “Seeking Kin,” that aims to help reunite readers with long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — Eliyahu Finkelstein grew up in the only Jewish family in the village of Zavizov in northwestern Ukraine, escaped from the Nazis after losing his parents and sister,… Read more »

(Jewish Ideas Daily) — Although the paint is still wet on Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History, an announcement has just been made of a planned National Museum of the Jewish People on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., steps from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and not… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — On his way to converting to Christianity, philosopher Franz Rosenzweig attended Yom Kippur services and was so moved that he decided to remain Jewish. One look at the most famous prayer for the occasion makes it hard to believe that he did not abandon Judaism… Read more »

TEANECK, N.J. (JTA) — What is the legacy of 9/11? The 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, give us a chance as a nation to reflect on more than just our own stories of what happened that day. One theme that has emerged is “Remember Sept.… Read more »

Yael Naim in 2007 became the first Israeli soloist to have a Top 10 music hit in the United States, and four years later the star of the Paris-based musician continues to rise. (Zoriah)

(Moment Magazine) — Yael Naim burst onto the international music scene when her 2007 single, “New Soul,” was handpicked by Apple for the MacBook Air’s debut commercial. The song, fresh off her first album, thrust the then-obscure 29-year-old artist into the limelight. When “New Soul” peaked at No. 7… Read more »

Sept. 11 photo montage

NEW YORK (JTA) — Osama bin Laden is dead. A new skyscraper is rising at the site of the old World Trade Center. U.S. troops are withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan. Ten years later, the physical legacies of 9/11 attacks are fading into history. Yet the conspiracy theories about… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) —  Breaking the fast has its own set of traditions. Ashkenazim usually break the fast with something salty, like herring, because they believe fish restores salt lost by the body while fasting. Herring also was the cheapest fish in Eastern Europe, where the custom originated. Egg and… Read more »

(JTA) — For Lee Weissman, a Breslov Chasid in Irvine, Calif., the recent onset of Elul caps a spiritual journey he began a month ago with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Weissman, a teacher at the Tarbut v’Torah Community Day School in Irvine and a… Read more »

In her new show, "Monajat," Galeet Dardashti has taken the 13th-century Sufi poem of the same name and blended it into the traditional Persian songs and liturgy for Selichot. (Courtesy of Galeet Dardashti)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Growing up, Galeet Dardashti toured and performed with her father, Farid, a renowned cantor, performing Middle Eastern and Persian music throughout the United States and Canada as part of The Dardashti Family. “We’ve been called the ‘Jewish Von Trapps,’ ” Dardashti says jokingly. Dardashti, a… Read more »

(Tablet Magazine) — Walk down the cobblestone alley and you’ll see it lined with restaurants serving falafel and schnitzel, and Internet cafes advertising their businesses with Hebrew signs and Israeli flags. Shoppers speak Hebrew, and Israeli pop music emanates from storefronts. A shopkeeper waves and calls out “Shalom!” to… Read more »

Footage taken from cameras aboard the Mavi Marmara showing passengers preparing for a confrontation with Israeli soldiers, May 31, 2010. Turkey has demanded an apology for the deaths of its citizens aboard the flotilla ship, but Israel has refused, causing a major rift in ties between the two former allies. (IDF/Flash 90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The bad diplomatic news for Israel just kept getting worse. First Turkey announced that it was slashing the level of its diplomatic ties with Israel to the second secretary level, giving the senior Israeli embassy staff 48 hours to leave the country. Turkey also said it… Read more »

The cast of "Hitler's Belly" (Tablet Magazine)

(Tablet Magazine) — A Chinese Hitler, dressed like a mall cop, mopes in an underground bunker in 1945 as his empire is collapsing around him. But it’s not all bad news. “My stomach hurts, and it’s bigger. I’m pregnant!” Hitler exclaims, stroking himself mindlessly. “Hitler’s Belly,” a hit play… Read more »

BALTIMORE (N.Y. Jewish Week) – On a recent Friday afternoon, an employee of a university here, passing through the Student Center building, noticed a student he knew sitting in a lounge and called out, “Shalom Abe.” The school is Morgan State University, a historically black institution in the northeast… Read more »

Israel and its supporters hope to head off a vote in the U.N. Security Council recognizing a Palestinian state when the council meets again in late september. The council is shown meeting to discuss developments in Kosovo, Aug. 30, 2011. (Courtesy United Nations)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — All but resigned to the inevitability of a Palestinian push for statehood at the United Nations later this month, Jewish groups are hoping that its effects can be blunted through aggressive diplomacy and the threat of action by the U.S. Congress. Jewish groups are urging foreign… Read more »

Congregation Chaverim will observe the first yahrzeit and celebrate the life of Karla Ember on Sunday, Sept. 11 at 9 a.m. Ember was cantorial soloist at Chaverim. She died Sept. 8, 2010, after being attacked Sept. 3, 2010 by a man friends described as either her ex-husband or ex-boyfriend… Read more »

Thousands of demonstrators in Haifa were among the 400,000 people throughout Israel who took part in the largest social protest in the nation's history., Sept. 3, 2011. (Chen Leopold/Flash90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Saturday night’s demonstrations by more than 400,000 Israelis calling for social justice represented a powerful climax to an unprecedented summer of protests and activism. The nationwide protests, billed as the March of the Million, have been called the largest demonstration in Israel’s history. Whether they ventured out in… Read more »

CAROL KARSCH, the executive director of the JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF SOUTHERN ARIZONA for the past 23 years, will retire in May 2012. The Foundation board has assembled a group of community leaders to begin the search for her successor. The qualifications guiding the search can be found on… Read more »

DAN ADLER of Keller Williams Southern Arizona, DAMION ALEXANDER of Tucson West Publishing and Long Realty and REBECCA GARFUNKEL of the National Alliance on Mental Illness – Southern Arizona are among those honored by the Arizona Daily Star in its annual 40 under 40 list, which recognizes young leaders… Read more »