Hasia Diner (Screenshot from YouTube)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Hasia Diner is one of the most acclaimed American Jewish historians in the country. A product of the Habonim Dror Zionist youth movement, she is a former Fulbright Professor at the University of Haifa in Israel. Now, she’s calling Zionism a “naive delusion” and says… Read more »
Jonathan Sarna at Brandeis University, his undergraduate alma mater and where he has taught for more than 25 years, May 10, 2016. (Uriel Heilman)
WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA) – When Jonathan Sarna was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1999 at the age of 44, it changed his life. Already a highly regarded historian at Brandeis University, Sarna was in the midst of writing his seminal study of American Jewish history when he realized with… Read more »
The cover of "Lincoln and the Jews: A History," by Jonathan Sarna and Benjamin Shapell. (Courtesy of Thomas Dunne Books)
(JTA) – A whopping 16,000 books have been written about President Abraham Lincoln. But a new book and an exhibit at the New York Historical Society tell a previously untold story about Lincoln: his relationships with Jews. Benjamin Shapell has been collecting documents relating to Lincoln and the Jews… Read more »
(JTA) — When Carolyn Starman Hessel joined the New York-based Jewish Book Council in 1994 — at the request of friend Marsha Posner — she knew nothing about the publishing world. Since then, she’s been called the “Jewish Oprah” for her ability to help authors find audiences, and has… Read more »
The davening room at Havurat Shalom, virtually unchanged since the early 1970s. (Jesse Edsell-Vetter) SOMERVILLE, Mass. (JTA) — To certain first-time visitors to Havurat Shalom, the congregation’s prayer room may look remarkably familiar. From the macrame Jewish star adorning the ark and the Middle Eastern-style lamp serving as a ner tamid to the pillows on a bare floor and the sparely decorated walls,… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — One night back in 1985, businessman Bruce Slovin was walking home from a corporate board meeting with a lawyer named Joe Greenberger when Greenberger asked him about his involvement in the Jewish world. Slovin responded that he wasn’t at all active, so Greenberger invited him… Read more »
