Religion & Jewish Life

WEST CALDWELL, N.J. (JTA) — Conservative Judaism is dying, I hear — or at least according to the media. Not so. Please don’t tell me that because North America’s United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism has had its problems, that means Conservative/Masorti Judaism is declining around the Jewish world. Yes,… Read more »

Michael Lerner

NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — Revolutions belong to the young, and Michael Lerner is growing old. Tikkun, the magazine he founded and still edits, turns 25 as he turns 68. Lerner wonders how long he can keep doing this. Tikkun is “the largest circulation progressive Jewish magazine in… Read more »

BERKELEY, Calif. (JTA) — It’s March, which means the days get longer and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict heats up on campuses across North America with the annual staging of Israel Apartheid Week. Last year, pro-Israel activists countered Apartheid Week events ranging from anti-Israel speeches to the staging of mock Israeli… Read more »

Project Kesher activists Elena Kalnitskaya, Svetlana Yakimenko, Olga Krasko and Vlada Bystrova pose outside a U.N. workshop in New York on Feb. 25, 2011. (Project Kesher)

(JTA) — When Elena Kalnitskaya of Ukraine talked about her organization’s women’s empowerment projects at a United Nations conference last month, she was presenting the face of social progress in her country. And she was doing it as a Jewish woman — not unusual, perhaps, for an American participant… Read more »

WALTHAM, Mass. (the Forward) — The 150th anniversary of the Civil War is upon us. April 12 is the anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter, the war’s opening shot. From then, through the sesquicentennial anniversary on April 9, 2015 of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House… Read more »

Community leaders worry that the widespread use of the Internet is undermining religious norms among Orthodox Jews. (Uri Fintzy)

NEW YORK (JTA) — For Josh, a Brooklyn computer technician who deals almost exclusively with a haredi Orthodox clientele, it was quite the conundrum: A man brings his computer to be cleaned of a virus that Josh believes was acquired while visiting a pornographic website. A few weeks later the… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — For three decades now, the American Jewish Reform movement has considered as Jewish the child of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother who is raised as a Jew. But most Reform Jews in the rest of the world still do not accept “patrilineal descent.” That… Read more »

WASHINGTON (Washington Jewish Week) — Is it anti-Semitic when someone defaces a photo of a Jew by adding devil horns, a mustache, goatee and a unibrow? Yes, says Redskins owner Dan Snyder. No, say numerous observers, including Redskins fans. The doctored photo of Snyder appeared in the Nov. 19… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — In the latest attempt to reverse the fortunes of what was once America’s largest synagogue denomination, the congregational association of the Conservative movement has released a draft strategic plan that seeks to improve its governance, reduce the financial burden on member synagogues and refocus its… Read more »

BERKELEY, Calif. (JTA) — The Chmielnicki massacres weren’t particularly funny. From 1648 to 1651, nearly 100,000 Jews were slaughtered throughout Ukraine by Bohdan Chmielnicki and his roving bands of Cossacks. It was arguably the worst pogrom in history, leaving hundreds of Jewish communities in ruins. Yet according to Mel… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — On Super Sunday, the alefs and bets in Green Bay and Pittsburgh will be thinking about X’s and O’s. They’ll even be up for a little friendly wager. On the morning of Feb. 6, many hours before the NFC champion Green Bay Packers battle the… Read more »

YEHUD, Israel (JTA) — The young would-be convert to Judaism with a gold Star of David pendant peeking through a buttoned shirt is still baffled by the summer afternoon he says he was called in and dismissed from an Israeli army conversion course for being gay. The 23-year old… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — What should a Jewish teacher say to a child who talks about helping grandma decorate the Christmas tree? “What the teacher should not say is, ‘You’re not supposed to do that — you’re Jewish,’ ” says Rachel Glaser, education director of the religious school at… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — Journalist and author Lisa Alcalay Klug flew across the country this month to present at Limmud NY, the annual New York version of the worldwide Jewish learning extravaganza. The Jan. 14-17 conference in upstate New York was Klug’s seventh Limmud gathering in 12 months. Like… Read more »

Campers at Ramah Darom in Georgia tending to the camp's five-acre organic garden. (Photo courtesy of Ramah Darom)

NEW YORK (JTA) — After the unexpected death of his 26-year-old daughter Jessica last August, Dane Kostin found himself searching for a fitting memorial, a project that would benefit the community and provide an appropriate tribute to a daughter who loved cooking with fresh, seasonal vegetables. Thus was born… Read more »

(JTA) — Debbie Friedman, the popular singer and songwriter who died Jan. 9, wrote the following for “I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl,” a collection of writings following the 2002 murder of Wall Street reporter Daniel Pearl. Dear Daniel, This is the… Read more »

Venezuelan Jews celebrate the opening of a new synagogue in Caracas, December 2010. (Jasmina Kelemen)

CARACAS, Venezuela (JTA) — On a balmy tropical evening in early December, a few hundred families, mostly of Moroccan descent, gathered to inaugurate the first phase of what eventually will be a grand, two-story marble shul located in a wealthy Caracas neighborhood. Among them, Claudio Benaim’s family beamed as… Read more »

Rabbi Yossi Kaplan of the Chabad Lubavitch Center, left, and Mohammed Aziz, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Valley Forge, before Friday Muslim prayers. (Jordan Cassway)

PHILADELPHIA (Jewish Exponent) — The cars slowly turn onto the long driveway, their wheels occasionally crunching the adjacent ground frozen from the night before and speckled with a light dusting of snow. Rabbi Yossi Kaplan and Mohammad Aziz walk side by side in the direction of the oncoming line… Read more »

At a program in suburban Boston titled "Raising up the light," 50 female rabbis in the audience were called up to the bimah in tribute, Dec. 6, 2010. (Larry Sandberg)

NEWTON, Mass. (JTA) — Lynne Kern knew at 13 that she wanted to be a rabbi, even though in 1970 there were no female rabbis to act as role models. So Kern became a writer, eventually winning a Pulitzer Prize for journalism. But she never forgot her passion, and… Read more »

ASL interpreter Naomi Brunnlehrman, left, and Alexis Kashar are co-founders of the Jewish Deaf Resource Center. (Ava Kashar)

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (JTA) — Alexis Kashar was listening intently to the speaker at a recent Jewish federation event in this New York City suburb. A closer look revealed that her eyes were trained not on the podium but on Naomi Brunnlehrman, who was seated in front of the… Read more »