Francine Hermelin Levite and Edgar Bronfman have been using unique versions of the Passover haggadah for years. Now both have decided to publish their versions of the Exodus story. Hermelin Levite, 43, the mother of three school-aged children, is the author of “My Haggadah: Made it Myself,” (http://madeitmyselfbooks.com), an… Read more »
Chevra Ahavas Yisroel, a new synagogue in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn shown here celebrating 2013 Purim, is breaking down stereotypes within the Chabad Community. (Courtesy Chevra Ahavas Yisroel) NEW YORK (JTA) — On a freezing Friday night in Brooklyn, a group of 18 Crown Heights residents scurry through the crowds of Jews leaving synagogue and make their way to a second-story apartment on Rogers Avenue for Shabbat dinner. Inside, hippie art and vintage John Lennon photos share… Read more »
Demonstrators protesting racism in Hungary in Budapest, December 2012. (Bela B. Molnar) BUDAPEST (JTA) — Three years ago, Fanni moved to Vienna from her native Hungary with her husband. Now she is pregnant. Though the couple would prefer to raise their child near their Jewish families in Budapest, rising nationalism and an economic recession are leading them to stay in Austria.… Read more »
Naomi Bloch's great-grandparents, Shlomo and Esther-Temme Rosenberg, pictured here, led the family's exodus eastward after Russia expelled the Jews of Siauliai in 1915. (Courtesy Naomi Bloch) The Seeking Kin column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) – Several “Seeking Kin” columns have presented people’s searches for descendants of relatives who emigrated from Eastern Europe to the United States. Now comes Naomi Bloch of Melbourne, Australia, with a search involving a twist:… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — If you’re looking to move to an apartment on or near Park Avenue, be prepared to break open the piggy bank. Prices are higher than ever and developers are squabbling over construction rights. That’s Park Avenue, Brooklyn — not its swankier Manhattan namesake. For decades,… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — After years of watching synagogue members die or move away, the Sephardic Jewish Center of Canarsie made the difficult decision to downsize. The 50-year-old Brooklyn synagogue had been a thriving center for the area’s Sephardim. But after accepting that it could no longer pull together… Read more »
Max Aaron skates his way to a gold medal at the 2013 U.S. Figure Skating Championship in Omaha, Neb., January 2013. (Courtesy USFSA) NEW YORK (JTA) — With consecutive quadruple jumps at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Max Aaron launched himself not only to a gold medal and a national championship. The 20-year-old Arizonan also joined the ranks of Jewish athletes who have made it big For Aaron, that was even more… Read more »
Omri Casspi of the Cleveland Cavaliers, atypically on the court rather than riding the pines, driving against the Chicago Bulls, Jan. 7, 2013. (NBA Photos) BALTIMORE (JTA) — Even as he sits on the Cleveland Cavaliers bench, watching yet another game proceed without him, Omri Casspi is working to improve. He studies his teammates and his opponents, focusing on the player he’d likely be defending if he were on the court. Casspi uses the… Read more »
BERGENFIELD, N.J. (JTA) — Some years ago I was discussing David Hartman’s work with the renowned Israeli philosopher Aviezer Ravitsky. “Hartman is not a scholar,” Ravitsky said about his colleague in Department of Jewish Thought at The Hebrew University. “He is more than a scholar.” Indeed he was. Rabbi… Read more »
Men blowing shofars to help the unmarried find matches at the ceremony of the grave of Rabbi Yonatan ben Uziel in a forest near Safed, Jan. 27, 2013. (Ben Sales/JTA) AMUKAH, Israel (JTA) — They walked up a tree-lined path through stony hills to a square, white building — men in black hats, beards and frock coats; in T-shirts and jeans; in sweaters, slacks and velvet kippahs. They came by the hundreds — 19-year-olds looking for a match, 40-year-olds… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Preaching to a preacher man — or woman — doesn’t always play out as planned. That’s the lesson learned this week by officials at the National Cathedral after several clergy, including three rabbis, made impromptu changes to the readings they were given to deliver at a… Read more »
Left to right, Baltimore Ravens' coach John Harbaugh, late owner Art Modell and general manager Ozzie Newsome at the Ravens training facilities, 2008. (Courtesy Baltimore Ravens) NEW YORK (JTA) — Every Sunday during the football season, a group of 30 diehard Jewish Baltimore Ravens fans suit up in purple pants, jerseys, socks, face paint and special Ravens tzitzit to watch the game together. If the game falls on a Saturday, the club gathers for a… Read more »
Jerusalemite Shlomo Achituv hopes to find the sister or some family of Sara Kucikwocz, pictured here, who was his student in their native Luniniec, Poland, but was killed in the Holocaust.. (Courtesy Shlomo Achituv) The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. “The Cruel Winter” How awful is winter, how awful is frost To far-off lands the sparrow has fled The animals have hidden, too, in the caves Beneath the hills and in the forest valleys The trees wrap… Read more »
(Jewish Ideas Daily) — Since the news of the Newtown massacre and its heartbreaking aftermath, an extraordinary talmudic passage has been reverberating in my mind. In answer to the speculative theological question of what occupies God all day, the Talmud, as interpreted by Rashi, declares that “there are twelve… Read more »
MARSEILLE, France (JTA) — As a soccer fan and treasurer of Maccabi France, Jean-Marc Krief is more preoccupied with his team’s legwork than with God’s work. So Krief was dismayed to learn that government officials in southern France were stripping the Marseille branch of the Jewish sports association of… Read more »
(Jewish Ideas Daily) — Although the Jewish encounter with modernity emerged out of a complex interplay of social, economic, and intellectual currents, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) is acknowledged as its godfather. The small-town Jewish boy who became a leading Enlightenment philosopher in Berlin not only embodied the synthesis of observant… Read more »
Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis will serve as Britain's next chief rabbi. (John Rifkin) LONDON (JTA) — Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has big shoes to fill. Appointed this week as the 11th British chief rabbi, he will succeed Jonathan Sacks, an internationally renowned author and public intellectual who speaks frequently on moral, philosophical and theological affairs. The widespread assumption among British Jews has long… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — Like many other mothers, Patti Weiss Levy’s heart broke when she heard about last Friday’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The longtime Connecticut resident lives an hour away from Newtown, so she assumed she wouldn’t know anyone involved. But as details… Read more »
Interior of the restored synagogue in Jicin, Czech Republic, one of the 10 Stars locations. (Ruth Ellen Gruber) PRAGUE (JTA) — A large Jewish museum set to open in the Czech Republic in October will be a far cry from any Jewish museum in Europe. Instead of one building or a complex of exhibition halls in one city, it will be a nationwide museum comprising 10 linked… Read more »
Schoolchildren from the Haitian town of Zoranje standing outside their middle school that was built by the JDC. (Courtesy American Joint Distribution Committee) NEW YORK (JTA) — It was the poor construction. There had been many earthquakes more powerful than the one that hit Haiti nearly three years ago, and there have been many more since. But few have been deadlier. When the tremor registering 7.0 on the Richter scale struck on… Read more »
