Mike Levin, seen here holding the Icelandic Jewish community's paper Torah scroll, once baked his own matzah for a Passover Seder because none was available in the country for purchase. (Alex Weisler) REYKJAVIK, Iceland (JTA) — For Mike Levin, a native of Chicago, it took a move to Iceland to turn him into a Jewish leader. More than 25 years ago, Levin met an Icelandic woman while both were studying music at a university in Vienna. They married soon after, moved… Read more »
Newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia attending a rehearsal for a Passover Seder at the absorption center in Mevasseret Zion, April 14, 2011. (Kobl Gideon/Flash 90) MEVASSERET ZION, Israel (JTA) — It’s a typical Friday morning in Israel’s largest absorption center: A handful of local residents, all immigrants from Ethiopia, mill about examining wares for sale at a small, unofficial souk. Located in Mevasseret Zion, a town just outside Jerusalem, the center has become more… Read more »
The owner of a sukkah that needed new infrastructure, Edmon J. Rodman looked into the national debate on job creation for a bipartisan solution. (Edmon J. Rodman) LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Each Sukkot we read in Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, that there “is a time to tear down, and a time to build up.” For my sukkah it was time for both. Last year the legs of my sukkah were bowed and its roof supports looked flimsy. This… Read more »
Dov Lipman, left, a Modern Orthodox leader in Beit Shemesh, and a haredi Orthodox man, Moshe Friedman, engage in a shouting match near the Banot Orot school. (Michael Lipkin) BEIT SHEMESH, Israel (JTA) — This time it started with cries of “Sluts!” and “Shiksas!” and the throwing of eggs and bags of excrement at young girls who attend a recently opened Modern Orthodox elementary school in this Jerusalem suburb. The assailants: religious extremists from the haredi Orthodox neighborhood… Read more »
Rabbi Berel Pewzner, left, and Rabbi Berel Grunblatt on the seventh-floor balcony of the Hotel Cabin, where Rosh Hashanah services in Reykjavik were held, September 2011. (Alex Weisler) REYKJAVIK, Iceland (JTA) — Nearly half an hour after Rosh Hashanah services were set to begin, the congregation in this chilly city still was one man short of a minyan. But as the small group of Jewish expats and their Icelandic spouses mingled and waited, no one complained. After… Read more »
Steve Jobs shows off the white iPhone4 at the 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference. (Matt Yohe via CC) WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (JTA) — Social networking sites began buzzing immediately after word spread of the death of Apple Inc. visionary Steve Jobs Wednesday evening. Rabbis took time out of their busy preparations for Yom Kippur to halt their sermon writing and post personal reflections on what the contributions… Read more »
While most people equate Sukkot with autumn vegetables, I picture the holiday as a tea party. Among Jews who build sukkot (huts), the evening meal is the most popular time to gather inside these modern-day harvest huts, but I much prefer spending afternoon hours inside a sukkah with a… Read more »
"The Pickering Potchkers" won the grand prize and the ribs competition at the 23rd annual Kosher BBQ Contest and Festival in Memphis, Tenn. (Stuart Lazarov) MEMPHIS, Tenn. (JTA) — If there’s anything that can bring the Jews of Tennessee together, it would be barbecue. Earlier this month, the 23rd annual Kosher BBQ Contest and Festival drew thousands of Jews from Tennessee and around the country. It attracted a group of Muslims, too. Turns out… Read more »
The Klezmer fusion band Butterfly Effect entertaining Israelis on Herzl tour at Fogashaz, one of the "ruin pubs" of Budapest's Jewish quarter. (Alex Weisler) BUDAPEST, Hungary (JTA) — Sometimes it takes a Zionist organization to show Israeli Jews that Israel isn’t the only place where Jews have a future. At least that’s what the World Zionist Organization and Habonim Dror, the labor Zionist youth organization, managed to do with a whirlwind trip this… Read more »
Waving the lulav and etrog, symbols of the fall harvest, is one way to Sukkot pleasure -- especially for kids. (Dasee Berkowitz) NEW YORK (JTA) — But are you happy? No, this isn’t your mother wanting another update on your life. It’s not Dr. Phil’s provocative question through your TV/computer screen as you sit (safely) on your couch. And it isn’t someone reading you the Declaration of Independence wondering if you… Read more »
VILNIUS, Lithuania (JTA) — Faina Kukliansky entered the theater alone, waved at a few friends and sat down to watch “I Shot My Love,” the Israeli documentary film that kicked off Lithuania’s first gay film festival. Some other Lithuanian Jews, she said, have told her to avoid such events… Read more »
BUDAPEST, Hungary (JTA) — It’s not easy to decipher the complicated trajectory of Jewish life in post-communist Europe. “There are claims and counterclaims about contemporary European Jewish life,” Jonathan Boyd, the executive director of London’s Institute for Jewish Policy Research, said. “At one end of the spectrum there are… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — At first glance, Reut looks like a typical religious Israeli high school. The first day starts with Shacharit, the morning service. The boys, all wearing kippot, sit separately from the girls. Only boys lead the service. There’s plenty of singing and clapping. The service lasts more… Read more »
(Sh’ma) — There was a time when I could not read the story of the binding of Isaac without wishing for a different ending — that Abraham would stand up to God, refusing to harm his son. Some of my rabbinic colleagues redefine the story, ignoring God’s words, “because… Read more »
(Forward) — In June, after a year of internal discussion, Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El, a Conservative synagogue just outside Philadelphia, made a tiny amendment to its constitution: It redefined household membership to apply to families with one Jewish parent as well as those with two. Though the amendment impacted… Read more »
JTA is introducing a new column, “Seeking Kin,” that aims to help reunite readers with long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — Eliyahu Finkelstein grew up in the only Jewish family in the village of Zavizov in northwestern Ukraine, escaped from the Nazis after losing his parents and sister,… Read more »
(Jewish Ideas Daily) — Although the paint is still wet on Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History, an announcement has just been made of a planned National Museum of the Jewish People on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., steps from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and not… Read more »
(Tablet Magazine) — Walk down the cobblestone alley and you’ll see it lined with restaurants serving falafel and schnitzel, and Internet cafes advertising their businesses with Hebrew signs and Israeli flags. Shoppers speak Hebrew, and Israeli pop music emanates from storefronts. A shopkeeper waves and calls out “Shalom!” to… Read more »
BALTIMORE (N.Y. Jewish Week) – On a recent Friday afternoon, an employee of a university here, passing through the Student Center building, noticed a student he knew sitting in a lounge and called out, “Shalom Abe.” The school is Morgan State University, a historically black institution in the northeast… Read more »
It was an ominous hum. A dozen refrigerated trucks loaded with the body parts of victims of the 9/11 attacks filled a cavernous tent across the street from the office of the city medical examiner, their low-pitched buzz an eerie soundtrack to the solemn work being carried out at… Read more »
