Posts By Jigsaw Digital

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, right, with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, left, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand at a Capital Hill reception for Jewish American Heritage Month, May 19, 2009. (Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s first day as a sophomore in the U.S. House of Representatives, on Jan. 8, 2007, was marked by a number of extraordinary achievements for a woman barely out of her first term. Named to the Democratic caucus leadership. Named to the all-powerful Appropriations… Read more »

MADISON, N.J. (JTA) — There are two things you need to know about “Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families,” one of the many new Passover haggadahs hitting the shelves this spring. The first is it’s not quite a haggadah. The second is that it’s by Cokie and Steve… Read more »

Arthur Szyk's magnificently illustrated Haggadah is being released this spring in its first widely available format since 1940. (Courtesy Abrams)

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — Nearing its 80th birthday, perhaps it was time the most printed Passover Haggadah in history had a major facelift. The Maxwell House Passover Haggadah, which has had more than 50 million copies published, hits the shelves — and supermarkets — this spring featuring its first… Read more »

NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — From the highest elevation in Itamar you can see everything but the future. On a clear day, says Rabbi Moshe Goldsmith, Itamar’s mayor, “We can see the three seas”: the Dead Sea, the Mediterranean and the Kinneret (Galilee). To the west, “We can… Read more »

Paula Shoyers "The Kosher Baker" features a chapter on Passover baking that excludes the taboos of flour and yeast. [Michael Bennett Kress]

NEW YORK (JTA) — With all the restrictions, are decent desserts even possible during Passover?       “My particular talent is working around restriction,” says Paula Shoyer, author of “The Kosher Baker: Over 160 Dairy-free Recipes from Traditional to Trendy” (Brandeis University Press, 2010). Her cookbook contains a… Read more »

WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA) — The relationship between American and Israeli Jews is changing. For most of Israel’s history, the American Jewish community was larger, wealthier and more powerful than its “poor cousin” in the Middle East, but now the differences between the two communities have greatly narrowed. More Jews… Read more »

President Obama and Israeli President Shimon Peres at their White House meeting talked about the Washington Post Op-Ed by U.N. investigator Richard Goldstone rescinding his conclusion that Israel had committed war crimes in the 2009 Gaza War, April 5, 2011. (Mark Neyman, Israel Government Press Office)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would launch an international campaign to cancel the Goldstone Report after its author, ex-South African Judge Richard Goldstone, wrote in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post that Israel did not intentionally target civilians as a policy during the Gaza War,… Read more »

Medical personnel clean the scene of where a bus exploded from a bomb, injuring 25 people, near the central bus station in Jerusalem, March 23, 2011. (Abir Sultan / Flash90/JTA)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – It happens almost like clockwork: Something happens in the Middle East, and it reverberates across the Atlantic with new letters from the U.S. Congress. With so many relatively new members looking to establish their pro-Israel credentials, the reaction in Congress to the recent violence in Israel… Read more »

Moosewood Cookbook author Mollie Katzen Lisa Keating)

BERKELEY, Calif. (JTA) – Cookbook maven Mollie Katzen is in her Berkeley kitchen whipping up a little dinner for her daughter, who is home visiting from college. “Steamed artichoke and mashed parsnips,” Katzen says, describing the contents of the two pots on the stove. “Last night was eggplant in… Read more »

Rabbi Richard Jacobs of Scarsdale, N.Y. was tapped to be the new president of the Union for Reform Judaism. Union for Reform Judaism)

NEW YORK (JTA) — For the man tapped to lead American Jewry’s largest religious denomination, keeping the movement’s 900-plus synagogues welcoming to the unaffiliated, inspiring for members and a home for disaffected traditional Jews may require a high-wire balancing act. As a former dancer and choreographer, Rabbi Richard Jacobs… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Does President Obama need a “Shalom Chaver” moment a la Bill Clinton? More fraught back-and-forth between the organized Jewish community and the Obama administration again has brought to the fore the question of what the president feels in his gut toward Israel and the Jewish people.… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — When David Portowicz was a new immigrant to Israel from Brooklyn in the 1970s, he began research on poverty in Jaffa that would lead to his life’s work: the creation of a nonprofit organization that now serves thousands of disadvantaged children and their families. A… Read more »

WEST CALDWELL, N.J. (JTA) — Conservative Judaism is dying, I hear — or at least according to the media. Not so. Please don’t tell me that because North America’s United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism has had its problems, that means Conservative/Masorti Judaism is declining around the Jewish world. Yes,… Read more »

Some of the 146 victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire lay on the streets of New york's Lower East Side, March 25, 1911. (International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (JTA) — Late on the afternoon of Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire erupted at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company on the top floors of a modern, fire-proof building at the corner of Manhattan’s Washington Place and Greene Street, near Washington Square Park. In the bedlam precipitated by… Read more »

SCARSDALE, N.Y. (JTA) — You can find the secret to creating lively Passover Seders in a surprising place — an 1,800-year-old law code called the Mishnah. For starters, the Mishnah did not envision reciting a Haggadah at the Seder. Instead, it designed a careful balance between aspects of the… Read more »

Michael Lerner

NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — Revolutions belong to the young, and Michael Lerner is growing old. Tikkun, the magazine he founded and still edits, turns 25 as he turns 68. Lerner wonders how long he can keep doing this. Tikkun is “the largest circulation progressive Jewish magazine in… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s time for the West to woo Latin America — some will say it’s about time. The United States and Israel appear to be heading toward increasing their focus on the area following years of neglect that has resulted in closer ties between Latin America and… Read more »

A rally in the suburban New York town of Massapequa, Long Island, protesting the stereotyping of Muslims is timed ahead of congressional hearings on Muslim radicalization convened by Rep. King, the local congressman, Feb. 22, 2011. (longislandwins via Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Are the congressional hearings on radicalization among American Muslims an instance of McCarthyism, or is the opposition to them political correctness run amok? Jewish groups may disagree on why, but there appears to be wide consensus that the congressional hearings led by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.),… Read more »

ZAKA volunteer holds a body bag containing one of the victims of the terror attack in the West Bank settlement of Itama, March 11, 2011. (Courtesy of ZAKA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Demonstrations in solidarity with settlers and a Cabinet committee’s approval for new housing in the West Bank are among the Israeli responses to the suspected terrorist attack that killed five members of a West Bank Jewish family. An estimated 20,000 people attended the March 13 funeral at a cemetery… Read more »

BERKELEY, Calif. (JTA) — It’s March, which means the days get longer and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict heats up on campuses across North America with the annual staging of Israel Apartheid Week. Last year, pro-Israel activists countered Apartheid Week events ranging from anti-Israel speeches to the staging of mock Israeli… Read more »