Tagged conversion

NEW YORK (JTA) — New York State Senate candidate Julia Salazar is pushing back against an article on a Jewish website describing discrepancies in her Jewish and family biography. Salazar, 27, a democratic socialist running for a seat in Brooklyn’s 18th district, has been profiled in various Jewish and… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — One of the biggest days of the year for Ronaldo and Bernadette Lopez is Christmas. They open up their Filipino restaurant in South Tel Aviv, and their friends bring their families, crowd the place and eat embutido, a rolled pork dish from their shared home… Read more »

A bar or bat mitzvah brings families together in a special way. In recent months, three Temple Emanu-El members with interfaith backgrounds created new family traditions as they demonstrated their commitment through this age-old rite of passage. A father and son celebrated a joint b’nai mitzvah, and the son of… Read more »

Alma Hernandez is passionate and strives every day to make a difference. People say her values and actions represent the core of Judaism, which is noteworthy because Hernandez didn’t grow up Jewish. At age 24, she has been active in the Jewish community for several years, even before she… Read more »

(Washington Jewish Week via JTA) — Maybe it’s the centuries of living under Christian and Muslim rule. Maybe it’s the history of forced conversion. Maybe it’s that there’s no religion requirement for the Jewish afterlife. Whatever the reasons, Jews have traditionally been uncomfortable proselytizing. But a Maryland foundation is flouting… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — In the years after he moved to Israel from Uruguay in 1995, Rabbi Mauricio Balter brought nearly 500 South American families to the Jewish state, some of whom settled near his home on the northern coast. A handful of the new arrivals were not Jews by… Read more »

EFRAT, West Bank (JTA) — The reputable car dealer’s advertisement in the local paper screams “Brand New Mercedes — Only $500!” You get excited but think it sounds too good to be true. Upon closer inspection, it is: The car dealer is offering only the hubcaps of the Mercedes… Read more »

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 »

Rabbi Stefano di Mauro has jump-started a tiny Jewish community in southern Sicily. (Alex Weisler)

On her deathbed, Salvatore Zurzolo’s grandmother confided a long-held secret: Their family was Jewish.… Read more »

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon of Temple Emanu-El in front of the Knesset, where 30 American rabbis were briefed during a ‘Rabbis Engaging with Israel’ mission last month

It’s not unusual for rabbis to frequently visit Israel, but last month Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon of Temple Emanu-El enjoyed the rare opportunity of traveling to the Holy Land as part of a select group from around the United States and Canada that included 10 Reform, 10 Conservative and… Read more »

Ruth’s day is coming. Not the Ruth with all the home runs. The other Ruth, the biblical one who hit an eternal shot for Jews by Choice. We read her book and story on Shavuot. Her words of commitment spoken to her mother-in-law, Naomi, travel over time to us… Read more »

    NEW YORK (JTA) – The U.S. Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements are warning that a proposed Israeli conversion bill is “disastrous to the unity of the Jewish people.”   Knesset members from the Yisrael Beiteinu party were in the United States this week trying to marshal support for a… Read more »