Yearly Archives 2012

(Jewish Ideas Daily) — About Menachem Begin the thing that I remember most was the way he talked. Begin wouldn’t say that he was born on the eve of the First World War; he’d say, as he did when a group of us from the Wall Street Journal interviewed him in 1981, that… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Twenty-five years ago, I joined hundreds of thousands of my fellow Americans — Jews and others — on the National Mall to draw attention to the plight of Soviet Jews. We were united by a simple belief that the Soviet Union, by denying its Jewish… Read more »

BOSTON (JTA) — At the 2009 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington, 50 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Jews and their allies gathered in a small room on the ninth floor of the conference hotel. The event was not part of the official GA… Read more »

PRAGUE (JTA) — In 1988, Yehuda Evron received a memorable letter from Lech Walesa, the first post-communist president of Poland, on the eve of the country’s transition to democracy. “He wrote that within a few months we would get my wife’s property back,” recalled Evron, now 80. His wife… Read more »

The Israeli police station in E!, the only Israeli structure in the area. (Ben Sales)

MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank (JTA) — From the terrace of the mall in Maale Adumim, a West Bank settlement eight miles from Jerusalem that serves as a bedroom community for Israel’s capital city, customers get a panoramic view of the Judean Desert to the east. Arab and Jewish towns… Read more »

Schoolchildren from the Haitian town of Zoranje standing outside their middle school that was built by the JDC. (Courtesy American Joint Distribution Committee)

NEW YORK (JTA) — It was the poor construction. There had been many earthquakes more powerful than the one that hit Haiti nearly three years ago, and there have been many more since. But few have been deadlier. When the tremor registering 7.0 on the Richter scale struck on… Read more »

In "Emanuel and the Hanukkah Rescue," author Heidi Smith Hyde explores what it means to hide one's identity through the tale of a spirited 9-year-old boy in a Massachusetts port town. (Courtesy Kar-Ben Publishing)

BOSTON (JTA) — An imaginative historical tale of adventure set on the high seas will captivate young readers this Chanukah season. “Emanuel and the Hanukkah Rescue” is one of a few new children’s books for the eight day Festival of Lights, which begins this year on the evening of… Read more »

NEWTON, Mass. (JTA) — Gateways: Access to Jewish Education, a Boston-based agency for Jewish special education, is offering eight suggestions from experts for a Chanukah celebration that is child friendly and fully accessible for children with special learning needs: 1. As Jewish parents and educators, we place a lot of… Read more »

Diane Heiman, co-author of "It's a...It's a...It's a Mitzvah," with children at a JCC of Greater Washington book event. (Courtesy Diane Heiman)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Chanukah, when children look forward to getting gifts and gelt, is an ideal time to recall Judaism’s commitment to helping others and tikkun olam, repairing the world. Two recently published books, “The Mitzvah Project Book: Making Mitzvah Part of Your Bar/Bat Mitzvah … and your… Read more »

Left to Right, some key players in the Israeli elections coming up on Jan. 22: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, Tzipi Livni of the New Movement Party and Shelly Yachimovich of Labor. (Yossi Zamir/Miriam Alster/Flash 90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Two months ago, the strategy for victory was clear: To unseat Benjamin Netanyahu in elections on Jan. 22, Israel’s handful of center-left parties had to unite under one banner and choose a leader who could challenge the Israeli prime minister on issues of diplomacy and security.… Read more »

Elie Wiesel and Oprah Winfrey (2012 Harpo Productions, Inc./George Burns)

Nobel Peace Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author Elie Wiesel will sit down with Oprah Winfrey Sunday, Dec. 9 on her series “Super Soul Sunday.” The episode, “Oprah and Nobel Prize Winner Elie Wiesel: Living with an Open Heart” premiers at 11 a.m. ET/PT (check local listings) on OWN:… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Exactly 25 years ago on Dec. 6, more than 250,000 people gathered in Washington to call on the Kremlin to open the gates and let Soviet Jews emigrate. Freedom Sunday, as it came to be known, was the largest Jewish-organized gathering in American history. The… Read more »

ST. GREGORY COLLEGE PREP­ARATORY SCHOOL has appointed Julie A. Sherrill, Ph.D., as the new head of school effective July 2013. Sherrill is currently principal at Sunrise Drive Elementary School in the Catalina Foothills School District. Sherrill began her career as a high school teacher in California and Ohio after… Read more »

MIKI PAUL, Ph.D., presented the keynote address, “When Love Hurts: A Survivor’s Story of Domestic Abuse and Healing,” at the “Break the Silence of Domestic Violence” conference for 180 faith leaders in Tucson on Oct. 24. The conference was sponsored by the Pima County Attorney’s Office and Emerge! Center… Read more »

Former U.S. Rep. GABRIELLE GIFFORDS and her husband, Capt. Mark Kelly, received the Shirley Agnos Legacy Award at the 101st Arizona Town Hall on Civic Leadership, Tuesday, Nov. 27 at Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale.         ADAM KWASMAN, a Tucson native, was elected to the Arizona… Read more »

JOSH PROTAS, vice president and director of the Washington D.C., office of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs since 2009, is leaving JCPA to create a Washington office for Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger. Protas was previously senior vice president for planning and community affairs and director of… Read more »

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, talking to journalists about the crisis in Gaza, Nov. 21, 2012. Rice, who reportedly is being considered for secretary of state, has earned plaudits from Jewish groups for her U.N. role. (UN photo/Paolo Filgueiras)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The very quality that helped get Susan Rice in hot water with some in Washington is what pro-Israel groups have come to appreciate — she is a vigorous and reliable defender of the Obama administration’s foreign policies. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who… Read more »

WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (JTA) — It’s no secret that Henry Ford was a notorious anti-Semite, and his company’s dealings with the Nazi Party during the Holocaust are well documented. But the company’s story has changed drastically in recent years. The Ford family’s donation of a rare 500-year-old Torah scroll… Read more »

People waiting in line for food packages at a distribution center for needy in Lod, near Tel Aviv, September 2012. (Yonatan Sindel / Flash90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — The numbers tell a consistent storyline: Nearly one in four Israelis lives in poverty. A report last week by Israel’s National Insurance Institute showed that 1.8 million of Israel’s 8 million people live below the poverty line. In 2011, the year for which the report… Read more »

NEWTON, Mass. (JTA) — Gateways: Access to Jewish Education, a Boston-based agency for Jewish special education, is offering eight suggestions from experts for a Chanukah celebration that is child friendly and fully accessible for children with special learning needs: 1. As Jewish parents and educators, we place a lot of… Read more »