By Keith Dvorchik, Special to the Jewish Sound I read with horror this week about the attack in a synagogue in Israel that left five dead, many injured, and millions of Jews around the world demoralized and shaken. How did we arrive at such a place when the vicious murdersContinue Reading
By Ed Harris A Jewish friend of mine once described Thanksgiving as his favorite holiday. He said Thanksgiving is the only celebration of the season that serves to unite people of all faiths, unlike Christmas and Hanukkah, which are drawn from entirely different religious traditions. In making this assessment, however,Continue Reading
By Tziporah Heller Dear friends, Yesterday at about 7 a.m. my daughter Miri called. “Mordechai just came home from shul. He said that Arabs came in and are shooting, and that a man with an axe is hitting everyone. Some of the people threw chairs at them, but it didn’tContinue Reading
By Mark Dratch NEW YORK (JTA) – In a recent JTA Op-Ed, Rabbis Marc Angel and Avi Weiss made a number of claims about the Rabbinical Council of America’s conversion system. While some of their arguments have merit, they paint only a partial picture of what we’re doing in theContinue Reading
By Avi Weiss and Marc Angel NEW YORK (JTA) — The Israeli government recently moved to decentralize the conversion system by allowing local courts to convert individuals on their own. Ironically, as Israel moves away from centralization, here in America the Rabbinical Council of America is enthusiastically embracing it. TheContinue Reading
By Rabbi Adam Rubin, Congregation Beth Shalom While most Americans are religious — the great majority of our fellow citizens continue to assert a belief in the Divine (though this has declined in recent years, according to most surveys) — it’s how we’re religious that I find interesting. In orderContinue Reading
By Michael Natkin, Jewish Sound Columnist Spaghetti alla carbonara is one of those great Italian dishes that comes with multiple-choice apocryphal explanations for the name. Possibly it is in the style favored by a group of charcoal makers, or coal miners, or maybe it was named after the charcoal burnerContinue Reading
By Rabbi Bernie Fox, Northwest Yeshiva High School Jewish education should no longer be marketed as the foundation of Jewish continuity. I have been professionally engaged in Jewish education for over 35 years. Until recently, I believed that we should promote intensive Jewish education as the only proven means ofContinue Reading
By Janis Siegel, Jewish Sound Correspondent The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is now epidemic, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev virologist Dr. Leslie Lobel told the Jewish Sound. But what really worries the researcher, who has been working with three deadly viruses in Uganda for 12 years, is thatContinue Reading
Rivy Poupko Kletenik, JTNews Columnist Dear Rivy, I’m very disturbed by the “mikvah peeper” scandal in D.C. First of all, what is going to the mikvah about, and how does it work? Who is really in charge of the mikvah, women or men? Is there any chance a man/my rabbiContinue Reading
By Joel Magalnick, Editor, The Jewish Sound Every morning, Seattle mayor Ed Murray wakes up, walks his dog, then gets a report on what happened overnight throughout the city. Invariably, he told a crowd of nearly 200 at Temple De Hirsch Sinai on Oct. 19, there will have been anContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, Jewish Sound Columnist There are a lot of reasons why Michele and Stan Rosen were named the 2014 outstanding philanthropic family by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. “It’s a little embarrassing,” says Michele of the attention. “There are lots of reasons we give, but [getting awards] isn’tContinue Reading
By Janis Siegel, Jewish Sound Columnist The evidence that our sleep time and quality is a significant factor in our health continues to mount. In May 2014, Israel: to Your Health reported that researchers at the Rambam Medical Campus in Haifa saw the mice in their study published in theContinue Reading
By Ed Harris, Jewish Sound Columnist Whew! The cycle of major Jewish holidays has finally come to an end. The succession of celebrations and observances began with Rosh Hashanah amid a cacophony of shofar blasts, continued with the hunger-pang inducing somberness of Yom Kippur, followed by Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret and,Continue Reading
By Elana Sztokman, JTA World News Service MODIIN, Israel (JTA) — With the news that Rabbi Barry Freundel, a prominent Orthodox rabbi, has been arrested for peeping at the naked bodies of his female congregants through a secret camera in the mikvah, or Jewish ritual bath, many disturbing questions areContinue Reading
You published an op-ed written by Ms. Gown and Mr. Bridge (“Fighting extremism and tolerance in Israel and Seattle,” Oct. 3), which urged action concerning the problem of gender-segregated bomb shelters in Israel during the Gaza action. In fact, based on my research, they were referring to one outrageous incidentContinue Reading
By Eugene Lipitz, Special to The Jewish Sound When my daughter Sophie went to Israel, one moment for her seemed a profoundly transformational experience. It wasn’t seeing the Western Wall or the huge variety of Jewish people so different from her own experience. It wasn’t even going to a venture capital meetingContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, Jewish Sound Columnist Steve Schwartz initially emailed me to say he’s “a Member of the Tribe who has found himself living and working with plenty of different tribes.” He might be referring to moving around a lot in the Midwest as a child before his family settled inContinue Reading
By Janis Siegel, Jewish Sound Correspondent As Jews worldwide welcome the New Year with prayers to be entered in the “eternal” Book of Life, Israeli scientists at Tel Aviv University found that religious observance in the lives of teens may play a significant role in preventing suicide in those whoContinue Reading
By Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg, Congregation Kol Ami For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. — Isaiah 56:7 For the past 15 years, Congregation Kol Ami in Woodinville has shared space with the Bear Creek United Methodist Church (BCMU) — at one time out ofContinue Reading
