Religion & Jewish Life

Jewish communal attitudes toward interfaith marriages, like the wedding between Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan in 2012, have shifted considerably since 1990. (Allyson Magda/ Facebook)

NEW YORK (JTA) — When the nation’s largest Jewish federation convened its first-ever conference recently on engaging interfaith families, perhaps the most notable thing about it was the utter lack of controversy that greeted the event. There was a time when the stereotypical Jewish approach to intermarriage was to… Read more »

Reflecting its new motto, "Protect the Refugee," HIAS is helping refugees in Chad. (Courtesy HIAS)

TARRYTOWN, N.Y. (JTA) — The new HIAS is not your grandmother’s Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and it’s certainly not the one that brought her mother over from the Pale of Settlement. After decades as the Jewish community’s foremost voice on immigration — first in leading the resettlement of Jews… Read more »

Hadassa Margolese walking her daughter Naama to school in Beit Shemesh a few days after Naama was harassed by haredi Orthodox men, December 2011. (Kobi Gideon/Flash90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Two years ago, Hadassa Margolese became a symbol of resistance to haredi Orthodox domination after she allowed her 8-year-old daughter to tell an Israeli reporter how religious men had spit on her as she walked to school. The report made headlines around the world and… Read more »

Jewish participants of an interfaith conference in Sarajevo saying the Kaddish over the graves of 1985 Srebrenica massacre victims, July 2013. (Courtesy CMJ)

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (JTA) — Sarajevo is a city with a rich multicultural past, but it also bears the scars of war. Take a short walk through the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina and you will see the many cemeteries and bullet-riddled walls, which are undergoing restoration. These lay side by side… Read more »

The world’s first lab-grown burger could be parve and thus paired with dairy products. (David Parry / PA Wire)

NEW YORK (JTA) — When the world’s first lab-grown burger was introduced and taste-tested on Monday, the event seemed full of promise for environmentalists, animal lovers and vegetarians. Another group that had good reason to be excited? Kosher consumers. The burger was created by harvesting stem cells from a portion… Read more »

Last month, I attended the annual conference of the American Jewish Press Association, along with other editors, publishers and staff of Jewish newspapers from across North America. One of the most intriguing tidbits at the final day’s “show and tell” session was a video cooking show from the Yiddish… Read more »

Dave Blackburn, shown at center during last week's opening ceremony, is attending the Maccabiah as a paralympian in table tennis after six previous appearances as an able-bodied softball pitcher. (Courtesy Dave Blackburn)

RAMAT GAN, Israel (JTA) — Dave Blackburn beamed triumphantly, surrounded by a crowd of American athletes and cheering spectators. It was like old times, the great pitcher basking in applause. But Blackburn wasn’t being ushered off the field with a championship trophy in hand as he was after leading… Read more »

When swimmer Garrett Weber-Gale heard his name announced last Wednesday as the U.S. flag bearer for the opening ceremony of the 19th Maccabiah Games, he just about lost his breath. A two-time gold medalist at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Weber-Gale had spoken with JTA earlier this week about the… Read more »

Former Montreal Canadiens coach Jacques Demers embraces his one-time goalie Patrick Roy at Roy's 2008 retirement ceremony at the Bell Centre in Montreal. (Photo by Richard Wolowicz/Getty Images)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Of all the compelling stories of athletic achievement and challenges overcome that could be told by the 9,000 participants gathering in Israel for the 19th Maccabiah Games, it might be hard to find one to top Jacques Demers. He’s a coaching legend, having led the iconic… Read more »

BALTIMORE (JTA) — The first arrows Roxana and Rafael Gonzalez launch at the upcoming 19th Maccabiah Games will take flight from their fingertips, but also from Jeffrey Sudikoff’s imagination. Roxana, 25, and Rafael, 24, are part of the first Cuban delegation to participate in the Maccabiah, a quadrennial sports… Read more »

A menorah made of Shmaltz Brewing's He'Brew beer bottles. (Shmaltz Brewing Facebook)

NEW YORK (JTA) — With the creation of David’s Slingshot Hoppy Summer Lager, beer maker Jeremy Cowan is evoking the image of the legendary battle between David and Goliath — a match-up that’s also apt for Cowan himself. Though still a small player in the world of craft beers,… Read more »

Yeshivat Maharat graduates at their ordination ceremony at Ramaz High School in New York City, June 16, 2013 (Joe Winkler)

NEW YORK (JTA) — More than three years ago, following a broad Orthodox backlash to his decision to ordain a woman with the title “rabba,” Rabbi Avi Weiss made a promise: He wouldn’t do it again. So when Yeshivat Maharat, the school founded in 2009 by the New York… Read more »

Marc Fichel at his tall at the Rungis wholesale market in Paris, May 29, 2013. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

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Left to right, Geulah Elementary School classmates Avraham Siton, Ora Bogomolny and Mashiach Moshe Shem-Tov meet for lunch in Florida months before their 60th reunion in Israel. Siton would die two days before the June 12 reunion.(Courtesy Ora Bogomolny)

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) – Ora Bogomolny sounded subdued, as if the phone call to her Israel apartment had disturbed her sleep. Indeed, she had experienced a nightmare just hours before receiving the call from “Seeking Kin” on June… Read more »

Rose Goteiner believes that her sister, Ruth Konigstein, is shown in the middle of the bottom row of this 1946 photograph taken in Amsterdam. (Courtesy American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Global Archives)

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) – Picking up her mail about a year ago, 88-year-old Rose Goteiner stopped in her tracks upon seeing the photo on a newsletter cover. Posing shortly after the Holocaust ended, 21 people were standing before… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — How do you confront hatred when it has no fixed address? Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League national director, attempts to pin down an answer to the question in his latest book, “Viral Hate.” Co-authored with privacy lawyer Christopher Wolf, the book chronicles the complications of countering… Read more »

A Star of David in the architecture of the Van Ostade Jewish Housing Project in The Hague. (The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, www.cidi.tv)

THE HAGUE, the Netherlands (JTA) — On a cold winter night in 2008, Wim Kortenoeven was startled by the crackling of a large fire raging near his home on the edge of this city’s last remaining Jewish enclave. Rushing from his apartment, Kortenoeven walked 70 yards and crossed the… Read more »

Dina Gachman

(JTA) — The year I unwittingly decided to become Christian started innocently enough. “There’s a sleepover at First Methodist on Friday and everyone is going,” I said to my parents. I was in the sixth grade, one of three Jews in class at our Texas public school. We lived… Read more »

NEW YORK (Corriere della Sera Online) — His Wikipedia page remembers him, in at least 10 languages, as “the Italian police commissioner who saved thousands of Jews from being deported to Nazi extermination camps during the Second World War and for this was deported to the Dachau Concentration Camp,… Read more »

Mimi Gold, an Israeli Reform rabbi who won a Supreme Court case entitling her to a state salary, has yet to receive a paycheck a year later. (Facebook)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Israel’s plans to move ahead with the funding of non-Orthodox rabbis appeared to be a landmark  achievement for Reform and Conservative leaders, who have long chafed at their second-class treatment by the Israeli government. But even as they welcomed last week’s news that the Ministry… Read more »