ATLANTA — PunkTorah has announced the fundraising launch for OneShul.org, the world’s first web-based, community ran synagogue. OneShul was inspired by group of PunkTorah volunteers who began meeting online to daven with one another, using PunkTorah’s recently released Indie Yeshiva Pocket Siddur (available online and through ModernTribe.com). With the… Read more »
Tagged HEADLINES
R rating sticks for “A Film Unfinished”
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Israeli director Yael Hersonski fought long and hard to bring the Warsaw Ghetto documentary “A Film Unfinished” to the screen, but she couldn’t beat Hollywood’s rating board. Earlier this month the Motion Picture Association of America upheld a previous decision of an R rating for… Read more »
On a Warsaw Ghetto film, an unwitting collaboration
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — The place is the Warsaw Ghetto, the year 1942, and the black-and- white footage shows fashionably dressed men and women, with yellow Stars of David as accessories, having a high time at a champagne ball. Later we see emaciated kids rooting through mounds of garbage… Read more »
From cowboy hats to black hats
NEW YORK (Forward) — Imagine the scene: Four bearded rabbis sit for hours around a table, swaying before their open volumes of the Talmud, debating whether a Jew who owns a gate tower near the entrance to his mansion is required to hang a mezuzah on it. A synagogue… Read more »
Ask the Expert: High Holidays tickets
Question: My wife and I decided not to buy High Holidays tickets this year because they’re so expensive. What can we do to mark the holidays at home on our own? –Norman, Chicago Answer: Every year as the High Holidays approach I hear people grumbling about the price of… Read more »
Israel tries to lure major banks to expand its R&D
NEW YORK (JTA) — If Haim Shani has his way, the titans of Wall Street will start moving more of their business to Dizengoff Street. Shani, the director general of Israel’s Finance Ministry, was in New York late last month on a mission to promote Israel as a center… Read more »
Dershowitz ‘yes’ on two states really a ‘no’
Alan Dershowitz wants in — to the “Community of Yes,” J Street’s new campaign to rally broad-based American support for meaningful presidential leadership to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We believe that a major presidential effort will be required to achieve our goal — ensuring Israel’s security and future as… Read more »
J Street’s Israel TV ad smacks of McCarthyism
J Street, the leftist lobbying organization that claims to be pro-Israel, is running a television ad that divides the world into two groups: the good guys who support the two-state solution, the end of the occupation and peace; and the bad guys who oppose these results and instead favor… Read more »
On conversion in Israel, Nativ program created for IDF shows there is a way
As the controversy over the conversion issue reached a fever pitch recently, a group of Israeli soldiers shuffled past flowerbeds into classrooms at the Jewish Agency’s Kiryat Moriah educational center in Jerusalem. Four hundred soldiers, many of them immigrants, come together from every army unit for 14 hours a… Read more »
Is a one-state solution, without Gaza, an answer to Greater Israel dreams?
In one of the more curious twists in Israeli politics, prominent figures on Israel’s right wing have begun pushing for a one-state solution with Israelis and Palestinians as equal citizens with full voting rights. The one-state solution previously had been the preserve of the post-Zionist left, Palestinian hard-liners and… Read more »
Diamondbacks to hold Jewish Heritage Day
The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona will take baseball fans out to the ballgame for the inaugural Jewish Heritage Day at Chase Field in Phoenix on Sunday, Aug. 22. The Colorado Rockies will play the Arizona Diamondbacks at 1:10 p.m. and fans will celebrate Arizona’s Jewish heritage with special… Read more »
Orthodox debate homosexuality: Outreach vs. ‘cure’
NEW YORK (Forward) — On a single week in late July, a major flashpoint in the internal culture wars of the Orthodox world erupted in two unrelated but connected incidents. The issue was homosexuality. A group of nearly 90 Orthodox rabbis chose July 22 to release its “Statement of… Read more »
Jewish fusion music key to Budapest’s ‘Jewstock’ festival
BUDAPEST (JTA) — Flora Polnauer, 28, tilts back her head, half closes her eyes and hums a few bars of a song by her hip-hop/funk/reggae band HaGesher. The song is “Lecha Dodi,” the Shabbat evening prayer — sounded over a Yiddishized version of the Beatles song “Girl.” It’s just… Read more »
Op-Ed: The long arm of Iran endangers Israel and the West
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Iran targeted Argentina’s Jews in a horrific car bomb attack 16 years ago. Now, as Tehran infiltrates Latin America, its aim is broader — the Western Hemisphere. Iran, tahe world’s largest and most successful state sponsor of terror, has gotten away with one of its most… Read more »
Op-Ed: What the American Jewish Congress gave American Jews
NEW YORK (Forward) — With the American Jewish Congress apparently closing its doors, there won’t be many mourners saying Kaddish. Instead, the prevailing communal sentiment will probably be: “We have too many agencies; one less will not matter.” The serious financial problems that had plagued the AJCongress over recent… Read more »
It’s all in a name: Tale of an orphan’s rescue from Chechnya
MOSCOW (JTA) — In a room at a Jewish asylum in Moscow, the boy sits on the lower part of a bunk bed looking down at the floor. Headphones on his ears, he pays no notice to a visitor. Except for his name, David Naumkin, there is no evidence… Read more »
Direct talks are needed to advance peace
NEW YORK (JTA) — In the history of the State of Israel, never have there been preconditions for face-to-face peace talks. While it was not obligated to do so, the Israeli government last November ordered a 10-month freeze in new building projects in the West Bank. This sign of… Read more »
Recession fuels rise in Russian aliyah
MOSCOW (JTA) – Years after Russian immigration to Israel dipped and then plateaued, the global economic downturn appears to be sending it higher again. Starting last year, aliyah from the former Soviet Union grew 21 percent over 2008, with 6,818 Russian-speaking immigrants moving to Israel in 2009. In the… Read more »
Stuart Levy: The man trying to make Iran sanctions work
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Stuart Levey was given a big stick when the Bush administration made him the first under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence. But the stick only started to hurt its targets — terrorist groups and rogue nations — when he figured out how… Read more »
Moscow exhibit gives a voice to Jewish Red Army soldiers
MOSCOW (JTA) — Lev Fein, a Jewish soldier in the Red Army, returned home to Minsk in 1945 to find a letter about his family being wiped out by the Nazis and the dire consequences of the occupation for Belarus Jews. “Father and Uncle Fein died on the third… Read more »