Posts By Jigsaw Digital

Orthodox rabbis join the conversation on LGBTQ inclusion

JQY Exective Director Mordechai Levowitz, center, in white shirt holding sign, coordinated the conference at Columbia University. (Courtesy of JQY)
April 27, 2015 / Gabe Friedman, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) – A group of modern Orthodox rabbis have done what advocates for Orthodox gays and lesbians say would have been unthinkable as recently as five years ago: They spoke at a conference on the treatment of gay, lesbian and transgender people in Orthodox communities. Four prominent… Read more »

Op-Ed: Courting Adelson is not Jewish outreach
April 24, 2015 / Debbie Wasserman Schulz, JTA

(JTA) — This weekend, a collection of GOP presidential candidates will arrive in Las Vegas for a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition. But don’t allow yourself to be fooled into thinking that these candidates are making a real attempt to appeal to American Jewish voters. Their presence is… Read more »

Op-Ed: Holocaust education is for memory and action
April 21, 2015 / Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, JTA

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — The International March of the Living is in its 27th year. In those years, over 220,000 young people from around the globe have come to Poland to study, reflect and remember. They then return to their communities to share their personal reaction to facing the… Read more »

Reconstructionists consider dropping ban on intermarried rabbis

Newly ordained rabbis Ilanit Goldberg, left, and Nicholas Renner drape a tallit over Malka Packer during her ordination ceremony at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College's 2014 commencement. (Courtesy of RRC/Jewish Reconstructionist Communities)
April 21, 2015 / Uriel Heilman, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — The Reconstructionist movement is on the cusp of making a historic decision about whether to drop its longstanding ban against intermarried rabbinical school students. If the policy change passes, as most expect, Reconstructionism would become the first of America’s four major Jewish religious denominations to ordain intermarried rabbis.… Read more »

Recycling toilet water and 4 other Israeli answers to California’s drought

A faucet and toilets are seen in a classroom in the ecological village in Nitzana, Israel. Students there learn about desalination and how to save water. (Chen Leopold/Flash 90)
April 21, 2015 / Ben Sales, JTA

TEL AVIV (JTA) — For help facing its worst drought in centuries, California should look to a country that beat its own chronic water shortage: Israel. Until a few years ago, Israel’s wells seemed like they were always running dry. TV commercials urged Israelis to conserve water. Newspapers tracked… Read more »

Will Russia’s missile deal with Iran end Israel’s silence on Ukraine?

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, being greeted by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, June 25, 2012. (Israel Government Press Office/ Kobi Gideon)
April 21, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

(JTA) — After Russia invaded Ukraine in March 2014, Israel resisted pressure to join the United States and its European allies in condemning the move — citing in particular its concern not to antagonize Russia for fear it could provide Syria with a powerful anti-aircraft missile called the S-300.… Read more »

Who are the Republican candidates’ Jewish donors?
April 20, 2015 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Election Day is 19 months away, but the campaign already has begun. Aside from Democrat Hillary Clinton, three Republican candidates with reasonable chances at the nomination have declared and several others are on the cusp. The Republican Party says it’s been making inroads with Jewish voters, who… Read more »

Is Kosher Switch really kosher for Shabbat?

In its first three days, the crowdsourced fundraising campaign for the Kosher Switch nearly met its $50,000 goal. (Kisger Switch video)
April 17, 2015 / Uriel Heilman, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — It promises a revolutionary innovation that could transform Jewish Sabbath observance. By changing the way a light switch works, the patented Kosher Switch offers a novel — and, its backers say, kosher — way to turn light switches (and, perhaps, other electrical appliances) on and off during Shabbat,… Read more »

Met museum’s new president likens role to managing Yanks
April 17, 2015 / Hillel Kuttler, JTA

HAVERFORD, Pa. (JTA) — Visiting the Memorial de Caen museum in Normandy, France, in 1996, Daniel Weiss was captivated by eight photographs showing the public hanging of three partisans in Minsk, Belarus, on Oct. 26, 1941. The two male victims’ identities were known, but the female was anonymous, and… Read more »

The history and the future of Israel
April 17, 2015 / Uri Dromi, Miami Herald

Next week, Israel will celebrate the 67th anniversary of its establishment as a modern nation. On Remembrance Day, the day before Independence Day, Israelis will cherish the memory and legacy of the 23,000 soldiers who gave their lives so that we would be able to live as free people… Read more »

In L.A.’s Koreatown, Wilshire Boulevard Temple bets big on the past for its future

The Wilshire Boulevard Temple is undergoing a restoration and expansion project that when complete will have taken more than a decade and cost nearly $200 million. Above, the synagogue's sanctuary. (Tom Bonner)
April 15, 2015 / Anthony Weiss, JTA

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — The time has long since passed when the Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s address on its namesake boulevard was considered glamorous. Now the surrounding blocks are the clamorous heart of Koreatown, with all its urban grit: traffic snarls, hulking office buildings, electronics shops, dentists, and banks with… Read more »

Stanford student accuses group of anti-Semitic question
April 15, 2015 / Drew Himmelstein, J. Weekly via JTA

(J. weekly via JTA) — A junior at Stanford University who is running for the student senate says she faced anti-Semitic questioning from a student group whose endorsement she was seeking. During a March 13 interview in front of eight members of the university’s Students of Color Coalition, Molly… Read more »

With fewer survivors around, Holocaust education is in transition
April 14, 2015 / Penny Schwartz, JTA

BOSTON (JTA) – On a recent morning, a group of seventh-graders in Natick, Massachusetts, was absorbed in a video of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s acceptance speech of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. “Why did he win?” asked their teacher, Tracy Sockalosky. She guided the discussion to the importance of remembrance, a… Read more »

When El Al flew to Tehran — and 9 other things you may not know about Israel’s past

Golda Meir, shown in January 1964, was not the world's first female prime minister. (Wikimedia Commons)
April 14, 2015 / Uriel Heilman, JTA

(JTA) — Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, falls on April 23. In honor of the Jewish state’s 67th birthday, we present, in no particular order, 10 little-known aspects of its history. El Al used to fly to Tehran. Iran and Israel enjoyed mostly good relations up until the Islamic revolution… Read more »

Clinton weighs loyalty to Obama with distinctions on Israel issues
April 14, 2015 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Hillary Clinton does not appear until 90 seconds into the two-minute video rolling out her campaign. No one among the bright and diverse array of everyday Americans in that video mentions foreign policy. Or Barack Obama. Jewish Democrats say the video released this weekend is emblematic… Read more »

Le Pen picks fight with father amid party’s surging Jewish support

National Front leader Marine Le Pen speaking with reporters following a meeting with French President Francois Hollande, Jan. 9, 2015. (Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images)
April 14, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

(JTA) — At 27, David Rachline is the youngest senator in the history of France’s Fifth Republic and a rising force within the country’s third largest party. A university dropout and the son of a Jewish Socialist Party activist, Rachline crushed his opponents in the 2014 mayoral elections in… Read more »

Op-Ed: What’s wrong with March of the Living
April 14, 2015 / Jessica Lang, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — The evening before we visited Auschwitz, over pizza with a group of young people in Oswiecim, the town on whose outskirts lies that infamous symbol, one of my students approached me with tears in her eyes. Tears are hardly uncommon to visitors of sites of… Read more »

Some good news coming out of France’s Jewish community: top-ranked schools

Girls study in a Jewish school in Sarcelles, France, Oct. 3, 2010. (Serge Attal/FLASH90)
April 13, 2015 / Canaan Liphshiz, JTA

.(JTA) —When mainstream French media report about Jewish schools, it’s usually not good news. Sometimes, the reports are about controversies surrounding public funding of such institutions in a country with a strong separation between religion and state. More often, the news is in the context of security around Jewish schools,… Read more »

Competing views of Iran deal highlight challenges ahead

President Barack Obama has said that Iran should be granted sanctions relief only once it begins to implement a nuclear accord. (Chip Semodevilla/Getty Images)
April 13, 2015 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Now that the outline for an Iran nuclear agreement has been released — or, more precisely, two outlines, one by Iran, the other by the Obama administration — major gaps have emerged that will need to be resolved ahead of a June 30 deadline for a… Read more »