By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent By almost anybody’s definition, Joe Shapira does not look like someone that would be cast as Yenta in Fiddler On The Roof. A heavyset, middle-aged businessman with a soft Israeli accent, he could more easily be a banker or a salesman than a matchmaker. InContinue Reading

By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent Without a doubt, there is today the broadest, most widespread, and perhaps the most virulent anti-Semitism the world has ever seen, according to an expert in the subject. Bruce DeBoskey, director of the Mountain States regional office of the Anti-Defamation League in Denver, told aContinue Reading

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By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent A lot can happen in 30 years. On Sunday, Feb. 29, parents, students, faculty, staff, friends and supporters of Northwest Yeshiva High School will reflect on just how much has changed—both in the school and in the Seattle Jewish community—at NYHS’s Annual Dinner, to beContinue Reading

By Jessica Davis, JTNews Correspondent In its first year, eight children enrolled at the Seattle Jewish Community School, which was located in the basement of Congregation Beth Shalom. Six of those students are now preparing to graduate from high school at the end of the school year and enter college.Continue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews Kelsey Ganes has been seeing a lot of butterflies lately. That’s because the 13-year-old South Seattle student has been overseeing a project to collect as many as she possibly can. The butterflies she is collecting—her goal is to reach a thousand by the beginning ofContinue Reading

By Jessica Davis, JTNews Correspondent Yiddish culture will be highlighted at Secular Jewish Circle of Puget Sound’s upcoming fundraiser, From the Shtetl and Beyond: A Celebration of Jewish Stories, Music and Humor, on Feb. 28 at the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island. “It’s an offering to the JewishContinue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent When Israeli Ephraim Bluth came to town the week of Feb. 8, he had a busy agenda. In addition to speaking at Northwest Yeshiva High School and Seattle Hebrew Academy, he made presentations at two synagogues and for a private party as well. Bluth’s annualContinue Reading

By Jessica Davis, JTNews Correspondent “We are in a different time of being gay and lesbian Jews,” says Flora Ostrow, Congregation Tikvah Chadashah president. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender congregations around the country, including Congregation Tikvah Chadashah, have been struggling with questions of identity. “Each of these congregations has realized…thatContinue Reading

By Britten Schear, JTNews Correspondent A computer scientist advocating less time in front of the computer is as hard to imagine as a politician holding himself to single-sentence answers during a debate. It is then reasonable to be skeptical of Professor David Levy’s warning that overloading on information is morallyContinue Reading

By Miriam Terlinchamp, JTNews Correspondent For a solid 18 months, life took a very different turn for Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, the nationally acclaimed author, Jungian therapist and leader of Renewal Judaism. As a vibrant speaker, scholar, mother and teacher, Rabbi Firestone’s schedule brimmed with classes, services and lectures. For aContinue Reading

By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent Rob Jacobs may be a new face around the ADL’s regional headquarters in Seattle, but he has been working for human rights throughout his life. He also brings some of the most varied experience to the regional director’s post in recent memory. Before moving intoContinue Reading

By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent Hundreds of concerned citizens gathered at Town Hall in Seattle on Feb. 9 to hear two interfaith religious leaders speak about Mel Gibson’s soon-to-be-released film, The Passion of the Christ. The movie has motivated many interreligious groups around the country to call it a misinterpretationContinue Reading

By Jessica Davis, JTNews Correspondent Twenty-five years after acclaimed architect Louis “Lou” Kahn mysteriously died from a heart-attack in Penn Station, his son Nathaniel Kahn went on a search of his father with a documentary titled My Architect. An Estonian Jew who immigrated with his family to Philadelphia in 1906,Continue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent With the announcement of this year’s Seattle Jewish Film Festival lineup comes a project undertaken by the festival’s organizers, which viewers will see before the popcorn even gets cold: visual vignettes of local faces on-screen, talking about what it means to be Jewish in AmericanContinue Reading

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By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent Even lunch will be educational at this year’s Mini-CAJE workshop. The lunchtime lesson for this local conference of the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education, titled “The Knowing is in the Eating: The Jewish Foods We Teach, ” will be taught by Carol Starin,Continue Reading

By Diana Brement, JTNews Correspondent My mother reports that during a recent conversation about religion, my brother said to her that none of their discussion mattered, since we were “all descended from converts.” My brother referred, of course, to the Khazars, the greatly mythologized central-Asian tribe whose royal family ledContinue Reading

By Joel Brodsky, Special to JTNews With sweat dripping down the side of my face and my legs aching from hours of uphill cycling, I wondered to myself, will this hill ever end? Lifting my head and looking out at the expanse of lush green and high rolling hills ofContinue Reading