Religion & Jewish Life

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In 2008, Daniel Sobajian listened to President Obama’s inaugural speech and liked what he heard. “He said go out and help your community and make a difference,” recalled Sobajian, then an eighth-grader at the Sinai Akiba Academy in Los Angeles. “I realized just how privileged I… Read more »

Models portraying Adam and Eve at the Genesis-themed opening of London's JW3 Jewish community center, Sept. 29, 2013. (Blake Ezra Photography)

(JTA) — At his office in London’s newly opened, $80 million Jewish community center, Raymond Simonson fumbles with a state-of-the-art telephone switchboard. “Sorry, I’m embarrassed, but we’ve only just moved into our offices,” says Simonson, the 40-year-old boss of London’s first American-style JCC, which opened Sunday. “Now the article… Read more »

A 2009 event in the Washington area was part of an effort by groups focused on engaging young American Jews.

NEW YORK (JTA) — If you’re pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Jewish identity building, what do you do when a survey comes along showing that the number of U.S. Jews engaging with Jewish life and religion is plummeting? That’s the question facing major funders of American Jewish… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — There are a lot more Jews in America than you may have thought — an estimated 6.8 million, according to a new study. But a growing proportion of them are unlikely to raise their children Jewish or connect with Jewish institutions. The proportion of Jews… Read more »

A Chabad volunteer helps people clear damaged goods from their homes in Colorado. (Courtesy of Chabad)

DENVER (IJN) — Before the start of Yom Kippur, a flood of historic proportions swallowed Boulder, Colo., and surrounding areas, displacing families, damaging synagogues and threatening services on the holiest day of the Jewish year — until determination came to the rescue. Orthodox Boulder Aish Kodesh hit the Internet… Read more »

Seth Pope is a fifth-grader at the Lippman School in Akron, Ohio, which began admitting non-Jewish students in response to declining enrollment. (Uriel Heilman)

AKRON, Ohio (JTA) — During a High Holidays discussion about repentance in Sarah Greenblatt’s Jewish values class, not all the students are listening. One girl stares out the window at the azure sky. Another sits in the back doodling. But a boy in the front row wearing a… Read more »

The graduation of the Torah School at the revitalized Temple Beth Israel of Highland Park and Eagle Rock, May 19, 2013. (Temple Beth Israel of Highland Park and Eagle Rock)

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) – When Henry Leventon, his wife and three daughters attended their first Sabbath service at Temple Beth Israel of Highland Park and Eagle Rock in 1976, the gabbai at the Los Angeles synagogue immediately approached.… Read more »

Nate Freiman, a rookie first baseman for the Oakland Athletics, is trying to help his team make the playoffs. (Hille Kuttler)

BALTIMORE (JTA) – Last September, first baseman Nate Freiman was doing his best to help Israel secure a spot in the World Baseball Classic. Despite some super hitting from the towering slugger, the team fell short. Fast forward a year. Freiman, 25, now finds himself in another playoff chase.… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — For years, Rina Deych was treated like she was crazy. Fighting the Yom Kippur ritual of kapparot, she was told things had always been this way and if she kept up the battle, she would only incite anti-Semitism. Year after year, people would kindly suggest… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Nine months ago, Natalia Demidova crouched on the second floor of her Staten Island home and watched her neighbor’s SUV race a 10-foot wave down the street. The wave crashed through Demidova’s quiet residential block in the South Beach neighborhood and flooded her home with… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — When Manya Monson was laid off in 2010, she knew she wouldn’t receive unemployment benefits, but she figured she could manage. Then a few weeks later she found out she was pregnant. “It made things very tough at that point,” Monson said. Had she been… Read more »

Maksim Kats, shown in Moscow in 2012, says the campaign of Moscow mayoral candidate Alexei Navalny is about making big changes in the political life of Russia. (Maksim Kats)

MOSCOW (JTA) — On the rooftop of a Soviet-era apartment block, a young man straps into climbing gear and rappels down the side as a small gathering of city workers and police officers watch from below. On the way down, the climber stops at a balcony and tears loose… Read more »

KRASNAIYA SLOBODA, Azerbaijan (JTA) — Even at 70, Yedidia Yehuda can negotiate a narrow mountain path in northern Azerbaijan with a confidence easily mistaken for carelessness. “You take care not to fall yourself and don’t worry about me,” he tells a visitor following him toward a small town on… Read more »

"Free Spirit: Growing Up On the Road and Off the Grid" (Hyperion Books)

OAKLAND, Calif. (JTA) — I know now that my family tree is adorned with rabbis and Hebrew novelists, Yiddish auctioneers and shtetl folk healers. But as a kid, I didn’t know a thing about it. I didn’t even know I was Jewish. My mother, Claudia, pulled up her roots… Read more »

Susan Esther Barnes

(JTA) — Susan Esther Barnes had had a rough two years. Her father’s death in April 2011 came as a shock; she hadn’t even known he had been hospitalized. And his widow’s leaving town for a week complicated plans for his funeral and burial. As executor of… Read more »

A model of the Second Temple at an exhibit of Third Temple vessels in the Temple Institute's offices in Jerusalem. (Ben Sales/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) – No praying. No kneeling. No bowing. No prostrating. No dancing. No singing. No ripping clothes. These are the rules that Jews must abide by when visiting the Temple Mount, the site where the First and Second Holy Temples once stood, located above and behind the Western… Read more »

Ilya Farber during his trial in Tver, Russia, July 2013. (Zhekov.ru)

MOSCOW (JTA) — Clutching the bars of the defendant’s cage, Ilya Farber assumes the posture of a crucifix as he proclaims his innocence and pleads for freedom with characteristic thespian flare. “I implore the judge to rule in favor of the children,” the Moscow-born Jewish artist begs the court,… Read more »

Aron Berger being interviewed earlier this year outside his daughter's state-funded elementary school in Antwerp. (Cnaaan Liphshiz)

(JTA) — New government regulations are threatening the pedagogical autonomy of Antwerp’s haredi Orthodox schools and sowing division between hardliners and moderates over whether to bring the community’s school system into conformity with secular educational standards. Earlier this summer, the Flemish government issued decrees that would force both state-funded… Read more »

Happier times for Ethan Kadish, who remains critically ill in a cincinnati hospital after being hit by lightning at summer camp. (Courtesy Kadish family)

NEW YORK (JTA) — On Aug. 17, two weeks after Ethan Kadish’s 13th birthday, the members of his family gathered around a Torah scroll in the chapel of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for a small ceremony marking his entrance into adulthood. This was not the Bar Mitzvah that Scott and… Read more »

Rabbi Uri Topolowsky and his family, seen here during a recent trip to Jerusalem, have left New Orleans and relocated to surburban Maryland. (Courtesy Uri Topolosky)

(JTA) — It didn’t take long after Rabbi Uri Topolosky moved to New Orleans in 2007 for the moderate Orthodox rabbi to win plaudits for helping the city’s Jewish community heal following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The congregation Topolosky was hired to lead, Beth Israel, had seen its building… Read more »