Thank you for your recent column entitled “Michael Lerner Looks Back as Tikkun Turns 25” (April 21, 2011). I, for one, was heartened to learn that Tikkun’s circulation is dwindling and that a full 40% of its remaining readership is non-Jewish. It cogently confirms that Lerner’s “unapologetically utopian” vision… Read more »
Posts By Jigsaw Digital
Jewish atheists look for their place in Jewish life
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SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — Jeff Levine has spent 40 years searching for a God he can believe in. He’s finally given up — but he’s not giving up on Judaism. “I did a lot of studying, and I realized about a year ago that it’s OK to say I’m… Read more »
The Tony Kushner flap: What does it say about the discourse on Israel in America?
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WASHINGTON (JTA) — It was the latest dustup over what constitutes acceptable discourse in the American Jewish community when it comes to Israel. Except this time the battle wasn’t contained within the community, but began at a university board meeting and spilled over onto the front page of The… Read more »
Palin, Trump may be media darlings, but they don’t excite Jewish Republicans
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Republican Jews to Donald Trump: You’re not hired. That is, not until you at least turn up to an interview with a resume. And the same goes for Sarah Palin, another media favorite who keeps flirting with a bid for the Republican presidential nomination but never… Read more »
On Independence Day, a reminder about Gilad Shalit
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JERUSALEM (JTA) — As Israelis celebrated the country’s 63rd Independence Day, they had much more on their minds than barbecues and fireworks. The carefully crafted theme of the day, “Looking after one another — the year of mutual care,” raised the hackles of some Israelis who do not believe… Read more »
As Israel marks 63rd birthday, a sense of disenfranchisement for Israeli Arabs
JERUSALEM (JTA) — In an elegant limestone building in a Jerusalem neighborhood that before 1948 was home to the city’s Palestinian elite, a group of Jewish and Arab Israeli academics recently tried to untangle one of Israel’s most complex and charged questions: the status of its Arab minority. “The… Read more »
How should Jews respond to bin Laden’s death?
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SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- When the news of Osama bin Laden’s death at U.S. hands hit the airwaves Sunday, America breathed a collective sigh of relief. Spontaneous celebrations broke out in front of the White House, as crowds gathered to wave the Stars and Stripes and chant their delight.… Read more »
Rare Nazi propaganda film showcases Theresienstadt as ‘paradise’ for inmates
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LOS ANGELES (JTA) — “The Fuehrer Gives the Jews a City” may rank as the oddest film fragment in cinematic history. The 23 minutes of raw, unedited footage is all that has been found of a Nazi propaganda project to prove that the “model” Theresienstadt camp was a veritable paradise… Read more »
Israeli leaders, U.S. Jewish groups hail death of bin Laden
(JTA) — Jewish and Israeli leaders welcomed the news that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan. The body of bin Laden, head of the terrorist group al-Qaida and the mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2011 attacks on New York and Washington, was… Read more »
Op-Ed: From the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, a challenge for today
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WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sixty-five years ago at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, 22 defendants stood in the dock. They represented a cross-section of Nazi diplomatic, economic, political and military leadership, and became the first people in history to be indicted for crimes against humanity. A tribunal of… Read more »
Fighters for Israel’s independence recall life-changing experiences
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — For Ira Feinberg, what he calls the “pinnacle of my life’s experiences” took place 63 years ago. Feinberg was a 17-year-old New Yorker when he joined the elite troops of the Palmach force fighting in Israel’s War of Independence. “No other experience in my life… Read more »
Bin Laden’s killing raises immediate questions of security
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NEW YORK (JTA) – For years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many Americans waited in fear for the next strike by al-Qaida on U.S. soil.… Read more »
Hadar’s popular egalitarian yeshiva grapples with sex before marriage
NEW YORK (Forward) — Just weeks before starting his year as a fellow at Yeshivat Hadar, an egalitarian Judaic learning program for adults, Itamar Landau moved in with his girlfriend. The fellowship demanded that Landau keep kosher and observe the Sabbath. The couple agreed to separate milk and meat… Read more »
Op-ed: The blogger is a dog…
BEERSHEBA, Israel (JTA) — Or a lunatic, extremist or just someone whose opinion you would dismiss were you really to know him. Like the famous 1993 New Yorker cartoon, where one dog explains to the other that “On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog,” we are inundated… Read more »
First-ever translation of Yiddish cookbook yields Old World treasures, New World Advice
TEL AVIV (JTA) — When a rare volume of a 1914 cookbook written in Yiddish for American Jewish housewives came into the hands of Bracha Weingrod, the once popular but forgotten book began its long journey from dusty oblivion to celebrated translation. The thick, worn copy of “Dos Familien… Read more »
Conservatives take kashrut up a notch
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SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — The Conservative movement’s ethical kosher initiative may not have been intended as a wedge into the Orthodox monopoly over kosher supervision. But the planned rollout this summer of the Conservative-backed seal of ethical kosher production, the Magen Tzedek, coincides with an increase in the number… Read more »
Bob Dylan: Tangled up in (Israeli) Jews
JERUSALEM (JTA) — With the greatest Jewish rock and roller of all time, Bob “You can call me Zimmy” Dylan, making his return to Israel after nearly two decades, the question arises: Will the crowd be bored? Dylan, whose lyrics have been soaked in biblical and religious imagery for decades,… Read more »
Farmer, rabbi and maple syrup maker, Shmuel Simenowitz melds Torah and environmentalism
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SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — It’s easy to spot Rabbi Shmuel Simenowitz at a Jewish food conference, an environmentalist gathering or any of the other progressive-minded confabs he frequents. Just look for the Chasid in the room. Simenowitz is an anomaly: a haredi Orthodox Jew, black hat and all, who… Read more »
Arrest of two Palestinians for Itamar killings can’t console Fogels’ kin
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JERUSALEM (JTA) — They came armed with knives and wire cutters looking for a Jewish target. It was a Friday night, the Sabbath eve of March 11, and Palestinian teenagers Amjad Awad, 19, and Hakim Awad, 18, both from the Palestinian village of Awarta, hurried through the dark… Read more »
The four ‘sons’ as characters from ‘Glee’
NEW YORK (Forward) — On a Tuesday night in April, millions of people will gather together for the tale of four Jewish children, each of whom embodies contemporary Jewish consciousness in a different way. The evening is filled with song, multiple narratives and insights into Jewish identity. I’m talking,… Read more »