Iconic Catskills resort to be demolished
The Kutscher resort, one of the remaining remnants of “Jewish Borscht Belt” culture, will be demolished later this month. The Monticello, N.Y. hotel has occupied its space in both the Catskills and Jewish American culture for more than a century. The site opened as the Kutscher’s Brothers Farm House inContinue Reading
The Kremlin’s TV station is promoting anti-Semitism?
Despite claims by Vladimir Putin that everyone else is blaming the world’s woes on the Jews, it appears that videos from the Kremlin’s TV station are doing just that, according to a story from The New Republic.Continue Reading
Israel wants Yom Kippur on UN calendar
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Israel has launched a campaign to have Yom Kippur recognized as an official holiday on the United Nations calendar. The U.N. officially recognizes 10 holidays, including Christmas and Eid al-Fitr. Absent from the official holidays is a Jewish one. A holiday at the U.N. entails aContinue Reading
Donald Sterling TV tirade puts surprise spotlight on Jewish free loan groups
By Anthony Weiss, JTA World News LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Not every celebrity endorsement is a welcome one. The saga of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling took yet another bizarre turn when he went on national television this week and started touting the virtues of Jewish mutual aid organizations.Continue Reading
Does new analysis of Pew report prove intermarriage is an Israel-repellant?
Today, the Forward revisits the Pew Research Center survey, which has occupied a great deal of discussion and concern amongst Jewish professionals throughout the US since its release in October of last year. The current analysis, prepared for the Forward by Steven M. Cohen, a professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish InstituteContinue Reading
ADL survey: More than a quarter of the world hates Jews
By Uriel Heilman, JTA World News Service NEW YORK (JTA) – A lot of people around the world hate the Jews. That’s the main finding of the Anti-Defamation League’s largest-ever worldwide survey of anti-Semitic attitudes. The survey, released Tuesday, found that 26 percent of those polled — representing approximately 1.1 billionContinue Reading
New Holocaust center to open in Eli Wiesel’s hometown
Maramures County in northern Transylvania is opening its first Holocaust education center, The Holocaust Cellar, on Sunday, May 18. The town is the childhood home in Romania of Nobel Prize-winning author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. The site of the new center is in the old Jewish ghetto of Sighet in MaramuresContinue Reading
The Israel conversation we should be having
By Rachel Lerner, JTA World News ServiceNEW YORK (JTA) — The recent vote by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations rejecting J Street’s membership bid was not entirely surprising. J Street had been reaching out to conference members and community contacts for weeks. We knew that gainingContinue Reading
Lag B’Omer with Jewish soldiers — at the pyramids
By Rafael Medoff, JTA World News Service WASHINGTON (JTA) — On the outskirts of Cairo, on a blistering hot afternoon in May 1942, British Army chaplain Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz ordered the driver of his military transport truck to pull over for a group of uniformed women who were hitchhiking. “WeContinue Reading
Design for Holocaust monument in Ottawa selected
Canadian Heritage Minister Glover, Foreign Affairs Minister Baird and Multiculturalism Minister Uppal announced this morning the team that will create a national Holocaust monument in Ottawa, Canada. The team includes world-renowned architect Daniel Liebeskind and led by Gail Dexter Lord, co-president of Toronto-based Lord Cultural Resource, which was responsible forContinue Reading
Non-Jewish couple donates recovered Holocaust Torah
Martin L. Johnson and Olinda Young of Phoenix, Arizona, have generously donated a 250-year-old Torah that was recovered from the Nazis to Virginia Commonwealth University. The couple are art and antique collectors with an interest in old Bibles. This is the not first Torah they have acquired and donated, butContinue Reading
Aram Boyajian Gould
Aram will celebrate his Bar Mitzvah on May 17, 2014, at Temple Beth Am in Seattle. Aram is the son of Tamara Dyer and Jon Gould of Seattle and the brother of Ellis Gould. His grandparents are Lorraine Dyer of Seattle and Susan Wolff of Chapel Hill, N.C., and theContinue Reading
Benjamin Joseph Kraft
Benjamin will celebrate his Bar Mitzvah on May 17, 2014 at Temple B’nai Torah in Bellevue. Benjamin is the son of Michael and Margie Kraft of Redmond. His grandparents are Arthur and Josephine Mendelsohn of Mercer Island, Faye Kraft of Seattle, and the late Joe Kraft. Benjamin is a 7thContinue Reading
New pluralistic military siddur will make the rounds on Memorial Day weekend
By Debra Rubin, JNS.org The Shabbat of Memorial Day weekend later this month will mark a first in American Jewish life: Three New York City congregations representing the three major U.S. Jewish movements will daven from the same prayer book. Produced by the Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) JewishContinue Reading
Each May, Jewish history and American history collide
By Robert Gluck, JNS.org Dr. Gary P. Zola sees an inextricable connection between American Jewish history, American history, and global Jewish history. “The study of the Jewish experience in the context of the American nation sheds light on the story of the nation itself,” Zola, executive director ofContinue Reading
The Jew in a window
By Joan Rudd, Special to The Jewish Sound I just spent six weeks gallery-sitting in a Jewish cultural heritage exhibit, for the most part by myself, next to Bellevue’s city hall. I designed and created the exhibit over a three-year period in collaboration with a cohort of Baby Boomers, a professionalContinue Reading
UW Jewish Studies goes over the hill with party, bright horizons
By Janis Siegel, Correspondent, The Jewish Sound Although turning 40 is usually a time for review, the theme of the University of Washington Stroum Center for Jewish Studies’ 40th Spring Gala in May is “looking forward” even as it celebrates its last four decades of immense growth. In 1974, now-retiredContinue Reading
A Rube Goldberg enterprise
The rejection of J Street’s application for membership in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is curious (Presidents Conference rejects J Street’s membership bid). Never mind what some may consider J Street’s controversial Mideast positions or its separately incorporated political action committee, the rejection speaks worlds aboutContinue Reading
So much like fiction
Emily Alhadeff’s reflections (“Court’s decision highlights a bigger problem,” April 25) on the Olympia Food Co-op’s decision to cleanse its shelves of Israeli products are very acute in suggesting that nearly all BDS agitprop against Israel can fairly be labeled “Jews Against Themselves.” But she overlooks one paradox: The symbioticContinue Reading
MOT: The art of health and the health of the arts
By Diana Brement, Jewish Sound columnist 1 “For improving health — and giving hope — to the world’s most vulnerable people,” Celina Schocken recently received a distinguished alumni award from Lakeside High School for her work in international public health. Now living in the New York area, Celina returned home toContinue Reading