Religion & Jewish Life

(Forward) — An upcoming haredi Orthodox mega-rally in New York about the dangers posed by the Internet has a promotional Twitter account. The event’s box office has an email address. Speeches will be live streamed. And one of the event’s organizers owns a Web marketing company specializing in search… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Observing my kids playing, I notice how the same toy, no matter how many times they play with it, can reveal the most remarkable things. My daughter, with the vocabulary befitting a 1 1/2-year-old, will bring her ball over to me and point to a… Read more »

Pilgrims enjoying the Hiloula celebration at the El Ghriba Synagogue in Tunisia, May 2012.

DJERBA, Tunisia (JTA) — Two thousand years ago, a mysterious woman who was unable to talk arrived on this island. Every sick person she touched was healed. Although she died when her wooden house caught fire, her body remained intact and did not burn. That’s a local legend. Another… Read more »

An anti-government demonstration in Budapest, December 2011. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

BUDAPEST (JTA) — The debate over anti-Semitism in Hungary has sharpened since the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish and anti-Roma (Gypsy) Jobbik movement entered Parliament two years ago as the country’s third largest party. Seeking scapegoats and channeling paranoia at a time of severe economic, social and political woes, Jobbik’s lawmakers regularly… Read more »

Rabbi Tamas Vero and his wife, Linda Ban Vero, outside Budapest's Frakel Leo street synagogue, where they head a growing congregation mainly made up of young families like themselves. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

BUDAPEST (JTA) — Linda Ban is a rebbetzin, but with a mass of curly hair and chunky rings on the fingers of both hands, she hardly fits the stereotype of a Central European rabbi’s wife. A mother of two in her mid-30s, Ban is married to Tamas Vero, the… Read more »

Pawel Bramson, left, at the Jewish cemetary in Warsaw. (Kuba Wyszynski)

WARSAW (JTA) — Fifteen years ago, Pawel Bramson was a skinhead shouting anti-Semitic and racist slogans during soccer matches. He hated Jews and blacks – simply, he says, because you need someone to blame for what’s wrong in the world. These days he keeps kosher, wears the long beard… Read more »

ATLANTA, Ga. (JTA) — When I was 8, I had names picked out for all of my future offspring (a dozen baby girls). At 13, I had my own babysitting business. After grad school, I was teaching a class of fourth-graders. So by the time I became pregnant with… Read more »

Students at hte Ben Gamla Kendall charter school in Florida paint durning an artist's visit to the school. (Courtesy of Ben Gamla Kendall)

BOSTON (JTA) — When the U.S. Supreme Court effectively legalized school vouchers in 2002, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs called it “a devastating blow to one of the foundations of our democracy”: the separation of church and state. Four years earlier, JCPA had conducted a yearlong study that… Read more »

Josh Breitzer, left, is invested as a cantor by Rabbi David Ellenson, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. (Photo Courtesy HUC-JIR)

(JTA) — What’s the difference between investiture and ordination? Plenty, say officials at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which has announced that for the first time since establishing its cantorial school in 1948, it will ordain rather than invest its graduating class of cantors. Six… Read more »

Arab and Israeli students holding hands at the Max Rayne Hand in Hand School for Bilingual Education in Jerusalem. (Kobi Gideon/Flash90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The two seventh-grade girls walk together down the hall, their heads touching as they talk excitedly. Dana’s dark auburn hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Waard’s head is covered by a hijab, the traditional Arab headscarf, held with a fashionable pin. Dana is Jewish and… Read more »

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — On Jan. 3, 1948, Mordechai Levy, a resident of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City, disappeared. The 17-year-old’s parents, David and Yaffa, alerted British mandatory authorities and checked local hospitals, the chevra kadisha… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Lithuania’s 800-year-old connection to its Jewish population broke down in 1941, when the Nazis invaded the country and murdered nearly all of its 200,000 Jews – often with the complicity of local Lithuanians. This month, 70 years on, Lithuania finally passed historic compensation legislation to… Read more »

Young Jews entering the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp in Poland during the 2010 March of the Living. (March of Living International)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Bernhard Storch grew up in a Jewish family in Silesia, near Poland’s border with Germany. Like many Polish Jews, he moved quickly from town to town as the Nazis advanced in 1939, trying to avoid capture. Before long he was caught and sent to a… Read more »

Eva Vavrecka contemplating the horrific living conditions that her mother and grandparents endured in the forest to survive World War II. (Bruce Konviser)

TRSICE, Czech Republic (JTA) — Nearly 70 years after a Czech Jewish family sought refuge from the Nazis by retreating into a nearby forest and relying on non-Jewish locals for help, an American high school teacher has helped erect a permanent monument to their memory. Last week, several dozen… Read more »

Sharon Azrieli-Perez, a Candian-born opera singer, performs "Turandot" with the New Israel Opera in 2008. (sharonazrieli.com)

NEW YORK (JTA) — When Sharon Azrieli-Perez told her father — David Azrieli, one of Israel’s biggest real estate moguls — that she wanted to be an opera singer, he told her he’d pay for voice lessons only if she got into Juilliard. That was all the motivation she… Read more »

After 21 years, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is retiring as Britain's chief rabbi. (United Synagogue)

(JTA) — The search to replace Britain’s powerful longtime chief rabbi has gone international, but even as resumes are gathered and interviews conducted, some are questioning whether the position is still relevant and what it means today for the Anglo Jewish community. As chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks brought… Read more »

(JTA) — Tributes and statements of profound respect and admiration are pouring in for Elan Steinberg, former executive director of the World Jewish Congress, who died April 6 of complications from lymphatic cancer. He was 59. “Elan’s premature death will leave a huge void in the Jewish world,” said… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Every Friday night, Scott and Theresa Johnson host Jewish Shabbat dinners for lone Israeli soldiers. The meal begins after sundown, preceded by the Kiddush blessing over the wine and singing of “Shalom Aleichem,” the traditional Hebrew song greeting the Sabbath. There’s one catch, however, made evident… Read more »

In his video for the song "HYFR," Drake re-creates his Bar Mitzvah -- sort of. (cash Money Records/Youtube)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Thanks to hip-hop superstar Drake’s latest music video, there are now far more eyes focusing on Temple Israel’s bimah than there are even during the High Holidays. And even though the song’s lyrics are decidedly more profane than sacred, the Reform synagogue’s president said he hoped… Read more »

Marion Achtentuch, 83, with her granddaughter, Shira Sheps, 25. (Shira Sheps)

(JTA) — Shira Sheps remembers walking through an exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan and stumbling upon her grandmother’s long-ago school reports alongside family photos and her great-grandparents’ wedding invitation. Sheps, 25, had known that her grandmother shortly after Kristallnacht had left Furth, Germany, at… Read more »