Posts By April Bauer

This woman is studying to be the first female rabbi from Uganda

Shoshanna Nambi wants to teach her rabbinical school colleagues about Ugandan Jewish traditions. (Courtesy of Nambi)

(JTA) — Growing up in Uganda, Shoshanna Nambi was active in her small Jewish community. She taught songs and the Torah portion to younger children and was a member of her community’s youth group. Learning Hebrew also seemed to come easily. So it seemed obvious to her that she… Read more »

Ghost writer revisits her own amazing Holocaust survival story in Amsterdam

During World War II, Miriam Dubi-Gazan registered falsely as the daughter of a Nazi collaborator without his knowledge. (Courtesy of Dubi-Gazan)

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — As a seasoned ghost writer who specializes in biographies, Miriam Dubi-Gazan says there is no such thing as a boring life story. Her attention to detail, creativity and editing skills yield satisfying results even for clients whose resumes are not exactly the stuff of spy novels… Read more »

Orthodox-trained rabbi makes history as head of a mostly Christian theology center

Rabbi Daniel Lehmann will be the first rabbi to lead the Graduate Theological Union based in Northern California. (Daniel Kates/Hebrew College)

SAN FRANCISCO (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Breaking religious barriers is nothing new for Rabbi Daniel Lehmann. Ordained at New York’s Yeshiva University, the flagship of Modern Orthodoxy, he most recently was president of Hebrew College near Boston, which is devoted to pluralistic Jewish… Read more »

Tough laws can’t snuff Israel’s smoking habit

An Israeli soldier holds a national flag as he smokes a cigarette near the Israel-Gaza border, Jan. 18, 2009. (Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)

(JTA) — On June 11, the Knesset’s official no smoking day, the Likud party’s Yehudah Glick announced that he was embarking on a hunger strike until the body passed a tax on loose tobacco equal to the tax on cigarettes. Glick’s dramatic gesture was a sign of a seldom-discussed crisis… Read more »

Home cooking classes where Israel and Jewish culture are always on the menu

From left to right: Jen Binford, Rachel Brown and Gabby Nordell cooking for Passover at a Mevashlim B’Ivrit class in Boise, Idaho. (Courtesy of Efi Asaf)

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) – In the compact, open kitchen of the apartment here that Dalit Gvirtsman shares with her husband, about a dozen women are jostling for space. One is chopping tomatoes, another is sauteing onions and another is squeezing a few dollops of honey into cooked egg noodles.… Read more »

OP-ED US immigration policies are straight out of the Bible — the story of Sodom

Illegal migrants seen in a jail at the Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, June 17, 2018. (U.S. Border Patrol/Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Last week, I visited McAllen, Texas, with a group of clergy — including 10 rabbis — to bear witness to the situation on the border, where new policies are forcing the detention and separation of families and the refusal to hear asylum claims from victims… Read more »

S’mores Babka Recipe

S'mores Babka (Shannon Sarna)

(The Nosher via JTA) – Babka is an Eastern European yeasted cake with deep Jewish roots and also great American popularity. One of babka’s most notorious moments was in an episode of “Seinfeld”:  Jerry and Elaine head to Royal Bakery to pick up babka for a dinner party, and… Read more »

Synagogues become nightclubs in Eastern Europe

Patrons at the Synagoga Cafe in Trnava, Slovakia, Sept. 13, 2017. (Wikimedia Commons)

TRNAVA, Slovakia (JTA) — Growing up, Robert Sajtlava remembers playing near what used to be his native city’s Orthodox Synagogue. A rectangular structure with a deceptively unimpressive facade, its ornate ceiling and interior walls suffered extensive damage from the precipitation leaking through the roof and, occasionally, by trespassers who… Read more »

Why New Jersey’s Orthodox stalled a bill banning child marriages

A New Jersey bill seeks to outlaw marriage for teenagers under 18. (Justin Oberman/Creative Commons)

(JTA) — A bill that would ban teenagers under 18 from marrying in New Jersey has been stalled because of opposition from the state’s haredi Orthodox community. Agudath Israel of America, the national haredi organization, says it supports the bill but that its provisions are too strict. Citing child… Read more »

Ugandan rabbi: ‘We as a Jewish community need to be treated like any other Jewish community’

Rabbi Gershom Sizomu leads Uganda's Jewish community. (Courtesy of Be'chol Lashon)

(JTA) — A Ugandan rabbi called on Israel to recognize his community after the government ruled against allowing members to move to the Jewish state. Rabbi Gershom Sizomu confirmed a report in Haaretz last week that the Israeli Interior Ministry had denied a community member’s immigration application. The Interior… Read more »

FIRST PERSON Elaine Holstein, last surviving parent of the four Kent State shooting victims, dies at 96

Author Steve North and Elaine Holstein, whose son Jeffrey Miller was killed in the 1970 Kent State shootings, seen in 2016. (Courtesy Steve North)

(JTA)– For nearly half a century, Elaine Holstein was periodically confronted with one of the most haunting images in modern American history: the bone-chilling picture of Kent State University student Jeffrey Miller lying on the pavement seconds after being fatally shot in the mouth by an Ohio National Guardsman… Read more »

For reporters covering Gaza, charges of bias overshadow the stories they witness and tell

Wounded protesters outside Gaza's main hospital, in Gaza City, May 14, 2018. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Of the more than 60 deaths that occurred during the recent clashes between Israel and Palestinians at the Gaza border, none was as divisive as that of Layla Ghandour. Ghandour, an 8-month-old girl, died after an uncle, himself only 12, brought her to the edge of the… Read more »

Hasidic volunteers, kicked out of a major NY hospital, blame a clash over medical ethics

A view of the Ronald O. Perelman Emergency Center at NYU Langone hospital in 2014. (Governor Andrew Cuomo/Flickr)

NEW YORK (JTA) — For years, volunteers from the Satmar hasidic movement have fanned out daily across the city, boarding private buses and carrying bags full of kosher food cooked each morning (except Saturday) at the organization’s commercial kitchen in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Members of the Satmar Bikur Cholim go to a… Read more »

Know your oligarch: A guide to the Jewish machers in the Russia probe

Andrew Intrater, on right, with USC Shoah Foundation board member Mickey Shapiro, left, Steven Spielberg and William Clay Ford, Jr. in Dearborn, Mich., Sept. 10, 2015. (Duane Prokop/Getty Images for the USC Shoah Foundation)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The special prosecutor’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election offers an unsettling journey for anyone steeped in Russian Jewry, and the transition from the repression of the former Soviet Union to the relative freedoms of the Russian Federation. Of 10 billionaires with Kremlin ties… Read more »

Banned from marrying interfaith couples, Conservative rabbis are finding other ways to celebrate them

Jamila Humphries, left, and Emily Schorr Lesnick are an interfaith couple that is taking part in an aufruf ceremony in a Conservative synagogue. (Courtesy of Humphries and Schorr Lesnick)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Emily Schorr Lesnick and Jamila Humphrie always knew that Judaism would play a part in the life they wanted to build together. But experiences with Conservative Jewish institutions had made the couple feel less than welcome. Schorr Lesnick, 28, remembers encountering homophobia at her Jewish… Read more »

These Jewish groups are fighting — even physically, according to some — behind the scenes

Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, at a Capitol Hill hearing on moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Nov. 8, 2017. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Last year, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations updated its secret rules to ban “insults, ad hominem attacks, and name-calling” among member organizations and instituted a special committee to consider complaints in strictest confidence. On May 2, the committee met, in strictest confidence,… Read more »

Israel defends Gaza crackdown as self-defense: ‘We are saving human life’

Palestinians protest at the border fence with Israel in Gaza City as mass demonstrations continued on May 14, 2018. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) —  Despite growing condemnation for the deaths of 60 Palestinians on the Gaza border yesterday, Israel defended its military’s actions as an act of self-defense in the face of a mass attack. “We didn’t want it to happen, but we understood these were Hamas’ intentions,” Dani… Read more »

Op-Ed: The #MeToo movement goes to summer camp

(Pxhere)

The #MeToo movement has empowered women to speak up against harassment and abuse. It is heartening to see many men standing as allies and organizations beginning to hold themselves accountable for establishing policies, procedures and transparency and for changing the workplace culture. For those of us working in youth-serving… Read more »

The anti-Semite running for Senate in California opens up to a Jewish newspaper

Patrick Little was kicked out of the California GOP convention on May 5. He was captured on video outside the convention stomping and spitting on an Israeli flag. (Courtesy of Little)

SAN FRANCISCO (J. the Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Patrick Little is more than an hour into an anti-Jewish tirade that doubles as the centerpiece of his campaign to unseat U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein when he issues a blunt warning. “The longer the Jews try to… Read more »