This week’s homepage features a “Back to Hebrew School” special, with an article on how to choose the best school for you children. But nationally, many parents are avoiding that decision. A new study, commissioned by the Avi Chai Foundation, finds that more and more Conservative and Reform Jewish parents are opting out of giving […]

As if Agriprocessors/Rubashkin’s isn’t keeping PETA’s hands full enough, Italian animal activists, citing Pope Benedict’s well-known love of cats, are calling on the pontiff to stop wearing fur in his official ceremonial raiment.
   
This is eerily reminiscent of a series of incidents earlier this summer in Jerusalem, where legions of Viznitz Hasidim are snatching each other’s […]

Ari Alexander guest blogged from the World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid, organized by the Muslim World League under the patronage of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Rabbi Alan Brill gives his take on Madrid, starting with going on Saudi TV and explaining that no, Rabbi isn’t his first name.
But Isi Leibler says that “being hosted […]

Score one (more) for budding innovative technologies in Israel: at Beit Ha’iver, the Center of the Blind, in Herzliya, a photography teacher conducts a class for visually impaired students.

According to Chueh Lee, the designer of the camera:
“The instructor found the visually impaired have no problems estimating distances, since their sense of hearing is especially […]

A New Jersey Conservative synagogue finds that instrumental music draws crowds for a Friday night service. (NJ Jewish News)
Five synagogues of four different denominations in White Plains, NY band together to help Kibbutz Bet Yisrael, one of Israel’s urban kibbutzim, and other “smaller organizations and programs that might not be on the radar for traditional […]

My Hasidic father-in-law, after being initiated as the president of his local branch of United Israel Appeal (an organization that, traditionally, is incredibly secular, with little patience for the Orthodox folks, and vice versa) made a tongue-in-cheek remark about how it would be the first time the head of a secular Israeli organization didn’t get […]

The Olympics are supposed to be a unifying event, bringing together the world for 17 days of friendly competition.
Yet there are antagonistic aspects of it. One of the most notable examples this year have been the calls to boycott the games due to China’s human rights violations, lack of freedom of religion, and support of […]

Do you ever notice how, for a paper with so much anti-Israel tactics, the New York Times sure reports a lot about Jews?

Then again, maybe it’s all a Jewish anti-Zionist plot. Williamsburg, Brooklyn “fixer” Isaac Abraham — a hardware store manager, tenants’ rights activist (and not just for Jews, either) was the focus of an […]

The headline says it all: “Jews discovered on Upper West Side”

Toni Morrison famously referred to Bill Clinton as the “first black president,” writing that he displayed “almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.”
Well, a recent NYTimes op-ed by David Brooks got me thinking: Can Barack Obama be the first Jewish president?
Though surely it wasn’t his intention, Brooks […]