Religion & Jewish Life

TEL AVIV (JTA) — In 2012, Anna Varsanyi was married in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony conducted through Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. Two years later, the Hungarian immigrant has made a life in Israel, settling with her husband in the central city of Modiin and working a desk job in a… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – There was the convert who was barred from a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Jamaican convert whose boyfriend’s rabbi offered him a coveted synagogue honor if only he’d dump her, the grandmother who told her granddaughter she’d be going to hell because she became a… Read more »

Moses, as best I recall from Hebrew school and “The Ten Commandments,” was a reluctant prophet with a speech impediment who was ultimately persuaded by the unspeakable, unceasing suffering of his people—and God’s fearsome support—to confront Pharaoh and lead the Hebrews out of slavery. My, how (biblical) times have… Read more »

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum, Kavana (Andy Ahlstrom)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — A decade ago in Los Angeles, two organizations opened their doors with a call to prayer — or they would have if they had any doors to open. Ikar, led by Rabbi Sharon Brous, and Nashuva, led by Rabbi Naomi Levy, were conceived separately. But… Read more »

Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish men during prayer at 770 Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of Chabad in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, N.Y., Sept. 24, 2013. (Mendy Hechtman/FLASH90)

NEW YORK (The Jewish Week via JTA) — Just three weeks after terrorists killed four worshippers in a Jerusalem synagogue, a man entered a Brooklyn shul and stabbed a 22-year-old Israeli student. New York police officers fatally shot the 49-year-old assailant, who reportedly shouted “Kill the Jews.” At a… Read more »

Ahuvah (Amanda) Gipson, left, and other members of the Bet Januka congregation located at Naval Station Rota in southern Spain, July 30, 2014. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

ROTA, Spain (JTA) — While setting up a synagogue at the American naval base where she works, Ahuvah (Amanda) Gipson made something of a bitter-sweet discovery. Rifling through a storage area at the sprawling American-Spanish military complex Naval Station Rota in 2012, Gipson, a former naval outreach professional who… Read more »

Janna Gur sees Israeli cuisine as being in the second stage of a revolution. (Daniel Lailah)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Janna Gur’s “The Book of New Israeli Food” has sat on my kitchen counter with my other favorite cookbooks for years, and I frequently pull it out for friends and family who are unfamiliar with Israeli cuisine, saying, “This is the book you need to… Read more »

Julie and Nathanael Weill with their sons Eytan and Lior in 2013.

TORONTO (JTA)—When Dan Charbit and his wife, Gaelle Hazan, moved to Montreal from Paris two summers ago, it was meant to be a temporary fix — a yearlong attempt for Charbit to reboot his stalled career as a special-effects artist in Quebec’s thriving film and television industry. They agreed… Read more »

Revelers dancing at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, one of many Jewish culture festivals in Poland. (Wojciech Karlinski)

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — Crowds have been streaming to Warsaw’s POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews since its core exhibition opened Oct. 28 at a high-profile ceremony led by the presidents of Poland and Israel. Thousands of visitors have toured the museum’s eight interactive galleries that tell… Read more »

BUDAPEST (JTA) — An anti-corruption whistleblower elected to head the Budapest Jewish community has sparked a crisis among the highest officials of Hungarian Jewry at a time of heightened tensions with the government. The conflict, one of the fractious community’s most vociferous and colorful fights in years, erupted shortly… Read more »

Ilana Kaufman: "My purpose in the world has always been to be a bridge." (Courtesy of Ilana Kaufman)

(JTA) — When Ilana Kaufman, a program officer at the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation, arrived at San Quentin State Prison for a meeting with the Jewish chaplain at California’s oldest correctional facility, the chaplain couldn’t seem to find her — even though Kaufman was standing in plain sight.… Read more »

Rabbi Yosef Mendelevitch at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport, Nov. 30, 2014. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (JTA) — Through the backseat window of a black KGB car, Yosef Mendelevitch could see university students his age hurrying to take their finals. It was June 15, 1970, and the 23-year-old Mendelevitch had just been arrested along with 11 accomplices for trying to hijack a… Read more »

Food samples were a big part of the draw at Kosherfest, held Nov. 11-12 in Secaucus, N.J. (Jeff Cohn/BaltimoreJewishLife.com)

SECAUCUS, N.J. (JTA) – Gefilte fish? Check. Pastrami? Check. Kosher-for-Passover anti-constipation pills? Edible spoons for Bar Mitzvah appetizers? A cholov Yisroel-certified alternative to the nutritional supplement drink Ensure? Check, check, check. Welcome to Kosherfest, the annual kosher food trade show where hundreds of kosher food companies come together to… Read more »

A U.S. Marine in Vietnam featuring a Magen David on his helmet, circa 1968 (Courtesy National Museum of American Jewish Military History)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Mementos of Jacob Goldstein slide across the 3-foot-by-4-foot horizontal screen like cards being dealt at a casino: his photograph, his name, an Operation Urgent Fury headline denoting the 1983 military campaign in Grenada, Goldstein’s explanatory text summarizing his role during the invasion. Even more striking than… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — As we prepare for our Thanksgiving feasts, a 90-year-old Jewish man named Arnold Abbott is stirring the pot in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., about hunger and homelessness in America. Or is it that Abbott, who in defiance of a controversial new city ordinance has been cited… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – There was the convert who was barred from a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Jamaican convert whose boyfriend’s rabbi offered him a coveted synagogue honor if only he’d dump her, the grandmother who told her granddaughter she’d be going to hell because she became a… Read more »

A Torah reading at Adas Israel Congregation, a Conservative synagogue in Washington. (Courtesy Adas Israel)

NEW YORK (JTA) — As the Jewish Federations of North America held its annual General Assembly this week, newly emerging evidence from the Pew Research Center’s 2013 “Portrait of American Jewry” points to enormous challenges facing federations, Jewish philanthropy and organized Jewish life, more generally. Virtually every Jewish institution… Read more »

Anna Varsanyi is considered Jewush by Israel's Chief Rabbinate but not by the country's Interior Ministry. (Courtesy Anna Varsanyi)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — In 2012, Anna Varsanyi was married in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony conducted through Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. Two years later, the Hungarian immigrant has made a life in Israel, settling with her husband in the central city of Modiin and working a desk job in a… Read more »

A view of the reconstructed painted ceiling of the wooden synagogue of Gwozdiec, a key installation in the core exhibit of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Oct. 28, 2014.

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — In a Europe wracked by fears of rising anti-Semitism, and in a country whose Jews were all but annihilated in the Holocaust, a dazzling new “museum of life” celebrates the Jewish past and looks forward to a vital future. Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski and Israeli… Read more »

A protester at a vigil for 18-year-old Michael Brown across the street from the police station in Ferguson, Mo., Oct. 20, 2014. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

MINNEAPOLIS (JTA) — Early last week, national faith leaders called rabbis, pastors, priests and imams to Ferguson, Mo., a city rife with racial violence and pain. Along with my rabbinic colleagues from Truah: The Rabbinic Call for Justice, I responded to the call to the people of Ferguson that… Read more »