Mitt Romney speaks to supporters at a rally in Tempe, Ariz., April 20, 2012. (Gage Skidmore via CC) Mitt Romney’s Lacrosse moment awaits him. The Democratic convention in Los Angeles was where Joe Lieberman made history as the first Jewish candidate on a major ticket on Aug. 17, 2000. But two days later, history came to life in Lacrosse, Wis., the little college town where he walked… Read more »
Rabbinic sisterhood: Three rabbis now in Chernow family (Jewish News of Greater Phoenix) (Jewish News of Greater Phoenix) — When Ilana Mills was 16 years old she had an epiphany: “I want to be a rabbi.” At first, she worried the only reason she wanted to follow that career path was because her two older sisters had talked about becoming rabbis. “I… Read more »
Israeli President Shimon Peres, center, meets with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, right, and former Major Leaguer Brad Ausmus, who will manage Israel's team in the World Baseball Classic, in Jerusalem, May 24, 2012. (Kobi Gideon/ GPO/FLASH90/JTA) WASHINGTON (JTA) — For decades, the joke in Israel went: How do you know when Shimon Peres is headed for defeat? When he announces that he is running. Peres — today Israel’s extremely popular president and on Wednesday a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom — always seemed doomed to… Read more »
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) speaks at the Jewish Museum of Florida in Miami in 2008. (Courtesy Debbie Wasserman Schultz for Congress) WASHINGTON (JTA) – When does a bimah turn into a political soapbox? The controversy last month over a Miami temple’s invitation and then disinvitation to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) — which prompted the resignation of an influential congregant who also is a Republican activist — has revived with… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Obama is spreading the word, one Jewish constituency at a time: He has Israel’s back. Obama defended his record on Israel and on religious freedoms on Tuesday during a White House meeting with Orthodox leaders. Challenged by one of those leaders on the efficacy of his… Read more »
David Sender at the 2009 Maccabiah Games Tel Aviv. (Courtesy Maccabiah USA) NEW YORK (JTA) — Nineteen years ago, gymnast David Sender and his family attended the opening ceremonies of the Maccabiah Games in Israel, where the then-7-year-old told his mom, “Someday, you’re all coming back here to watch me back down here.” Sixteen years later, Sender was one of the U.S.… Read more »
Elias Inbram wears a shirt he made that features a yellow star and reads: "Caution -- I am not an illegal African immigrant!" JERUSALEM (JTA) — When violent riots against African migrant workers erupted in south Tel Aviv recently, a mob attacked Hanania Wanda, a Jew of Ethiopian origin, mistaking him for a Sudanese migrant worker. “Wanda is my friend,” says Elias Inbram, a social activist in the Ethiopian community and a… Read more »
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — President Obama made a simple and very basic mistake when he spoke of Polish death camps during the presentation of a posthumous Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a Polish resistance fighter who was among the first to report German atrocities in his country. The… Read more »
Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black was among the justices who agreed with the decision on the 1962 Engel v. Vitale case, which banned prayer in public schools. (Photo courtesy United States Library of Congress) When President Obama publicly endorsed same-sex marriage last month, most secular Jewish leaders applauded while some religious ones disagreed — the latter group joining their Catholic counterparts. In doing so, these representatives echoed sentiments thrust into the public sphere five decades earlier, ones that simultaneously symbolized a new Jewish… Read more »
Alzheimer’s disease is a dreaded brain disease that afflicts an estimated 5 million Americans — mostly people over 65 — and half of people over 85. Feared more than cancer by most people, Alzheimer’s disease is expected to increase exponentially as the baby boomer generation swells the ranks of… Read more »
Daniel Pipes The fetid, dark heart of the Arab war on Israel, I have long argued, lies not in disputes over Jerusalem, checkpoints, or “settlements.” Rather, it concerns the so-called Palestine refugees. So-called because of the nearly 5 million official refugees served by UNRWA (short for the “United Nations Relief and… Read more »
The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona held a community discussion, Think Tank 2020, on May 2. Nearly 100 community members representing diverse ages and backgrounds met at the Tucson Jewish Community Center to begin framing the issues to be explored as part of the Federation’s strategic planning process. The… Read more »
(Jewish Ideas Daily) — First, the bad news: Sexual, physical, and emotional abuse occurs in Orthodox Jewish communities. Next, the worse news: Though there is no evidence that such abuse occurs more frequently among the Orthodox than in other populations, two recent front-page New York Times stories are just… Read more »
Yana Levy, left, and her husband, Harry, and their three children inside their apartment in Sofia. (Courtesy Bulgaria Office of the American Joint Distribution Committee) SOFIA, Bulgaria (JTA) — The stories – some months or years in the making — started trickling in last year. Young successful families were showing up desperate. As Bulgaria’s program director for the American Joint Distribution Committee, Julia Dandalova ran social services programs for the Jewish community’s most needy:… Read more »
GREENSBORO, N.C. (JTA) — The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Since the May 8 vote to approve North Carolina’s Amendment One referendum, which constitutionally bars the state from recognizing as legal any marriage… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) – There was common ground on Iran and preserving the social safety net at a meeting between Democratic senators and Jewish community leaders, although subtle tensions on both issues emerged. In the back-and-forth on Capitol Hill, the senators pushed back against the notion that the Obama administration… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — By the time he was 26, Jan Karski had been imprisoned by the Soviets, tortured by the Gestapo, and nearly drowned while escaping from a hospital in German-occupied Slovakia. Had he chosen then to end his service in the World War II-era Polish underground, few would… Read more »
Rabbi Alona Lisitsa, a Reform rabbi, participated in a religious council in Mevasseret Zion, a town west of Jerusalem, May 2012. (Rabbi Alona Lisitsa Facebook Page) Non-Orthodox movements continue making inroads in Israel By Mati Wagner JERUSALEM (JTA) — After a Jerusalem-area’s religious council allowed a female Reform rabbi to participate in its proceedings, some advocates of liberal Judaism in the country are hailing their inroads into the Orthodox-dominated religious infrastructure. At the beginning of May,… Read more »
Daniel Levine, fourth-generation owner of Manhattan's J. Levine Books and Judaica, says that while online booksellers such as Amazon hurt his business a decade ago, now he's been able to use the Web to boost his sales. (Alexandra Halpern) NEW YORK (JTA) — The books are in the back at J. Levine Books and Judaica. Before finding the volumes of Jewish titles at the midtown Manhattan store, customers encounter a rotating display of mezuzahs on the left, followed by shelves of kiddush cups and a rack featuring a Hebrew-language… Read more »
Some 40,000 haredi Orthodox men filled Citi Field in New York to rally against the dangers of the Internet, May 20, 2012. (Ben Sales) NEW YORK (JTA) — The sellout crowd that filled Citi Field on Sunday night wore black and white, not the New York Mets’ blue and orange. And instead of jeering the Philadelphia Phillies or Atlanta Braves, they faced a foe that was, to hear them talk about it, far… Read more »
