Religion & Jewish Life

NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — The issue of who can become a Jew through conversion is controversial and critical to determining the essence of the Jewish character, and as timely as the current headlines from Jerusalem. But as two rabbinic scholars — one Reform and one Conservative —… Read more »

The Robert M. Beren Academy in Houston is open to kids 18 months old and all the way through high school. (Courtesy Robert M. Beren Academy)

NEW YORK (JTA) – With day school tuition fees on the rise, New York housing costs among the highest in the nation and the job market still tough, the Orthodox Union has a solution for Orthodox Jews under pressure: Move to Houston. In a first-of-its-kind partnership for the organization, the… Read more »

BALTIMORE (Baltimore Jewish Times) — On his Facebook page, Airman 1st Class Matthew Ryan Seidler posted the lyrics to one of his favorite tunes, “Opportunity” by Australian singer-songwriter Pete Murray. “Your coffee’s warm but your milk is sour/Life is short but you’re here to flower,” the lyrics state. “Dream… Read more »

(New Jersey Jewish News) — It’s a familiar story: Kids grow up in a suburban synagogue, move to the big city and leave the synagogue behind. What’s a congregation to do? How about bring the synagogue to the big city? That’s the thinking behind the monthly Friday night services… Read more »

PARK CITY, Utah (JTA) – Kosher food isn’t something one generally associates with ski resorts, and Utah isn’t a place known for its Jewish population. But after Canyons, the state’s largest ski resort, opened the nation’s first ski-area, glatt kosher restaurant this season, the Jews came. And ate. And… Read more »

Mollie Darmon, left, and Allie Lichterman, seniors at Frankel Jewish Academy in suburban Detroit, using their iPads in class. (Frankel Jewish Academy)

WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (JTA) — Toward the end of his life, Apple’s visionary leader, Steve Jobs, was visited by another computer innovator, Microsoft’s Bill Gates. The conversation turned to the future of education. As related in Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of Jobs, both men agreed that computers had made surprisingly… Read more »

PARK CITY, Utah (JTA) – Call it the Sundance Synaplex. This week, crowds of people will be flocking several times a day to Temple Har Shalom in this picturesque ski town, but they won’t be coming for Shacharit, Mincha or Maariv services. Instead, for 10 days the synagogue is… Read more »

Filipinos light Chanukah candles in their home in South Tel Aviv on Nov. 24, 2010 in advance of the Jewish holiday. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — With eyes closed, it would have been difficult to guess that the female voice with the amazing range singing a Hebrew classic was a shy-looking, 11-year-old Filipina. But there was Kathleen Eligado performing Miri Aloni’s “Ballad of Hedva and Shlomik” before a prime-time television audience… Read more »

JTA’s new “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — Even after seven decades, Peter Nurnberger’s most basic biographical facts remain elusive. The Slovakian doesn’t know his birth date, his natural parents’ fate or whether they had any other children. Peter’s adoptive parents… Read more »

Gustav Zoltay, left, the director of the Federation o Hungarian Jewish communities, and Peter Feldmajor, its president, at the founding of the new Hungarian Jewish Congress. (Szabolcs Panyi)

BUDAPEST (JTA) — A whistle-blowing rabbi and a reform-minded lay leader are at the forefront of new efforts to shake up Hungary’s entrenched Jewish establishment. Late last year, Rabbi Zoltan Radnoti reportedly alerted authorities to complaints of embezzlement and tax fraud in the operation of Budapest’s main Jewish cemetery on Kozma… Read more »

Reporter Alex Weisler, second from right, and his mother, second from left, unite with lost relatives in Ukraine. (Alex Weisler)

LVIV, Ukraine (JTA) — The more I thought about it, the more it began to seem like a reasonable choice: I would roam around Europe for six months, visiting Jewish museums, talking to youth groups and covering various community happenings. I would travel from vibrant London to the post-Communist… Read more »

(Sh’ma) — In 1948, two social scientists published the first scholarly study of religious group voting patterns in the United States. According to the authors, Catholics, Jews, and Baptists were Democratic by margins of two to one or better. Five denominations that we would classify as mainline Protestants were… Read more »

U Tin Oo, a former commander-in-chief of Myanmar's army, lights a candle at the Chanukah celebration in Yangon, Myanmar, Dec. 27, 2011. (Sammy Samuels)

(JTA) – In almost any other community from Moscow to Washington, it would have been just another public Chanukah menorah-lighting ceremony providing an opportunity for the local government and Jewish community to showcase their strong ties. But in Myanmar, where the government has been run by a military junta… Read more »

NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — If you were to take a cultural tour of New York today, you’d think Sigmund Freud were as relevant to society now as Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. Everywhere you’d turn, from Broadway to the movies, you’d find the father of psychoanalysis holding… Read more »

Jonathan Lev, left, is the youngest Jewish community Centr director in the country, part of a young cohort infusing energy into Boulder Jewish life. (Boulder Jewish News)

BOULDER, Colo. (JTA) — On a sunny Thursday in this city at the base of the Rocky Mountains foothills, 25 Jewish communal professionals have gathered for their monthly “Schmoozers” meeting at the JCC. The fact that the powwow always takes place over lunch is unremarkable — when Jews get together,… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The Pacific island nation of Samoa is taking 186,000 citizens through a national time warp by moving west of the international dateline, forfeiting the last Friday of 2011 and jumping straight from Thursday into Saturday. For Samoans, this solves a practical question: Why remain 18… Read more »

Ernie Blake, founder of Taos Ski Valley, with his wife, Rhoda, in an undated photo. (Courtesy Taos Ski Valley)

TAOS, N.M. (JTA) – One of the most wonderful things about skiing is the sense of seclusion, the incomparable quietude and serenity of standing atop a 12,000-foot peak surveying miles and miles of snow-covered emptiness. Somehow the prosaic concerns of the everyday world don’t seem to reach there. So… Read more »

The 2011 biennial conference of the Union for Reform Judaism was the movement's biggest ever, and many participants said it was the most energetic they had ever attended, Dec. 17, 2011. (URJ)

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. (JTA) — The metaphors abound. To Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the next president of the Union for Reform Judaism, it’s a gas station. To Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the outgoing president, it’s an anchor. To Stephen Sacks, the incoming chairman of Reform’s board, it’s a supermarket. They’re all… Read more »

Barbados Blackbelly sheep on Brenner and Saunders' ranch (Ben Harris)

(Tablet Magazine) — “This is Fuji?” Hersh Saunders, 59, called from the kitchen sink. He was hovering over a platter of bright pink ground beef about be balled up into burgers. On his head was a large knitted gray yarmulke, and he was wearing a Weird Al Yankovic T-shirt… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — At the end of this year, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of Union for Reform Judaism, will be stepping down after 16 years at the movement’s helm. Last week, Yoffie sat down with JTA Managing Editor Uriel Heilman at the URJ’s offices in New York ahead… Read more »