Religion & Jewish Life

LOS ANGELES (Jewish Journal) — In the same week in which a San Francisco judge struck from the city’s November ballot a controversial measure aiming to ban circumcision of any male younger than 18, two reputable media sources reported on a relatively new, little-known ceremony that serves as a… Read more »

Michael Ripstein on patrol along the Egyptian border (courtesy Michael Ripstein)

MAZKERET BATYA, Israel (Tablet) — In 20 years of military service, I thought I’d seen all the crappy training camps the Israeli army had to offer. But there I was, early one morning last spring, walking from the glorified gravel pit that passed for a parking lot at the… Read more »

The assembly line at Empire Kosher Poultry's plant in central Pennsylvania is the largest kosher one of its kind in America, with 240,000 chickens and 27,000 turkeys passing through every week. (Uriel Heilman)

MIFFLINTOWN, Pa. (JTA) – The end came swiftly for the chicken I’ll call Bob. Propelled into a trough of sorts by a machine that tips a crate’s worth of birds onto the assembly line — “They’re like children, sliding down,” the head kosher supervisor said — chicken Bob was… Read more »

AVIGNON, France (JTA) — The roomful of artists, musicians and cultural leaders let their imaginations run wild. Unencumbered by budgetary considerations or practical concerns, they dreamed up a theater partnership between Budapest and Bordeaux, a traveling photo exhibit on the idea of “kosher spaces” and a host of other… Read more »

Sen. Joe Lieberman, right, shown visiting special operations forces in Afghanistan on July 4, 2011, says his strong Jewish faith leads him to forge an independent path, striking aliiances with both parties. [Sgt. Lizette Hart, U.s. Military Public Affairs, via Creative Commons]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Call Joe Lieberman the unlikely evangelical. The Independent senator from Connecticut — and the best-known Orthodox Jew in American politics — is probably more cognizant than most of his Jewish congressional colleagues about rabbinical interdictions against encouraging non-Jews to mimic Jewish ritual. Yet here he is,… Read more »

Onlookers peer at the archeological dig and planned museum site on the Rathaus square in downtown Colgone. (Alex Weisler)

COLOGNE, Germany (JTA) — This city in western Germany is banking its future on its Jewish past. But at present, the investment is exacting a heavy price: $52 million, to be exact. Following a divisive decades-long battle, Cologne’s municipal government voted recently to allocate that sum toward the construction… Read more »

VIENNA, Austria (JTA) — The symbolism was unmistakable. Four thousand Jews stood just a few hundred yards away from the spot where a quarter-million Austrians cheered Adolf Hitler in March 1938 as he announced Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria. This time, however, the Jews had come to celebrate, as… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — When Mitchell Ross was a boy, he remembers his grandfather hanging out with the men’s club at his Conservative synagogue. “I always felt it was something older Jewish men were involved in, the over-60s club,” said Ross, a 39-year-old cardiologist in Phoenix, Ariz. Today, Ross… Read more »

Kevin Youkilis

PHILADELPHIA (Jewish Exponent) — Kevin Youkilis says he truly doesn’t know what he would do if faced with the same dilemma as Hank Greenberg, Sandy Koufax and Shawn Green. What if the Boston Red Sox are scheduled for a post-season game on Yom Kippur, which begins on Friday night,… Read more »

BERLIN (JTA) — Aviv Russ stands behind a console with his headphones on and speaks into a large microphone. “We’re here: ‘Kol Berlin,’ the German-Israeli radio program. Shabbat shalom!” says Russ, 34, an Israeli expatriate. Russ has been on the radio in Berlin nearly every Friday for about three… Read more »

Trees left standing by Joplin High School following the May 22, 2011 tornado collected debris from the heavily damaged school, June 4, 2011. [John Daves/U.S. Army via Creative Commons]

NEW YORK (JTA) – When a tornado devastated the small city of Joplin, Mo., in late May, the city’s lone synagogue was left untouched — at least, physically. Bu tthen came the flood. Not as water, but in the form of phone calls from across the United States from… Read more »

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — In Austria and Poland recently, I couldn’t seem to get away from students, scholars and just plain interested folks who were taking or teaching summer programs in Jewish studies. I myself spoke at a three-day “summer academy” in Vienna where more than 100 members of… Read more »

PITTSBURGH ( The Jewish Chronicle) — The students of Northern Cambria High School often walked by the 85-year-old deserted synagogue, but never paid it much attention. Some did not even know what it was. But all that has changed. And in a big way. For the past year, 15… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (The Jewish Journal) — Located in the northern part of Santa Barbara County, but as distant from chic Santa Barbara as one can imagine, Santa Maria is a blue-collar town dotted with fast-food and barbecue joints. In recent years its population, at least half of which is… Read more »

Zumba instructors, including Shelley Engel, center, and Esther Goldberg, right, join the Phillie Phanatic in a performance for a charity fundraiser last summer. (Julia Elkin)

PHILADELPHIA (Jewish Exponent) — At age 54, Esther Goldberg has danced in front of 46,000 people at a sold-out Phillies game and behind a casino bar wearing little more than a see-through mesh shirt over a sparkly bra. This is what Zumba can do to an otherwise mild-mannered masseuse… Read more »

A local woman wheels her baby in front of the Auschwitz Jewish Center, in the heart of Oswiecim. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

OSWIECIM, Poland (JTA) — Can a town that exists in the shadow of death transform itself into a place of normalcy? The question long has vexed Oswiecim, the town of 40,000 in southern Poland where the notorious Auschwitz death camp is located. For decades, residents and city leaders have… Read more »

MOSCOW (Tablet) — Blumi Lazar’s wedding was not an intimate affair. A thick white dek tichel completely covering her face, Blumi stood under a massive raised chuppah of indigo velvet and gold fringe, swaying ever so slightly next to her groom, Isaac Rosenfeld, before some 1,500 invited guests. Among… Read more »

Moishe House Baltimore residents Jen Posner, left, and Mickey Rubin, wearing a Baltimore Orioles cap, host a rooftop barbecue for other young Baltimore Jews, May 19, 2011. (Moishe House Baltimore)

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — Ben Levinson, 28, was born and raised in St. Louis. He returned after college to find most of the Jewish friends he grew up with had moved away. That’s not unusual: St. Louis is one of many U.S. cities with shrinking Jewish populations and, as… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (j weekly) — It’s a warm Sunday afternoon in the Berkeley hills, and if you look west from the road that abuts Tilden Park, the San Francisco skyline is about as clear as it gets. As with most nice days, the park is full of people —… Read more »

Participants in a 2011 Yeshiva University Alternative Break program in Nicaragua, run throught he American Jewish World Service, learn to connect volunteer service to their Jewish values. (American Jewish World)

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — Most young Jews do some kind of volunteer service, but few do it through Jewish agencies or connect it to Jewish values. Poverty, the environment, education and illiteracy are the areas that draw most young Jewish volunteers, with Israel-related work at the bottom of the… Read more »