Friday, April 19th 2024 |
By ALAN SMASON
Deborah “Deb” Cotton, the outspoken writer and community activist who was just awarded the top honor from Avodah for her work in advocating for the African-American and Jewish communities to which she belonged, died Tuesday, May 2 as a result of the injuries she sustained in the Mother’s Day shootings nearly four years ago. She was 52.
Cotton, who hailed from Texas and Oklahoma, found her identity...
By ALAN SMASON
Avodah, the Jewish Service Corps, held its sixth annual Partners in Justice Brunch on Sunday, April 22 at Temple Sinai. For the second year in a row, the event was housed at a URJ (Reform) house of worship and for the fifth consecutive year two members of the local Jewish community – Pamela Steeg and Deb Cotton – were selected to receive accolades from the organization for...
By MARCY OSTER and BEN SALES
(JTA) – Anti-Semitic incidents in the United States soared 86 percent in the first three months of 2017 after rising by more than one-third in 2016, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
There has been a massive increase in harassment of American Jews, largely since November, and at least 34 incidents linked to the presidential election that month, the ADL said Monday in its annual...
By CNAAN LIPHSHIZ
(JTA) — Leaders of French Jewry had mixed reactions to the success of Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron in the first round of the French presidential elections.
“Satisfaction and concern,” Francis Kalifat, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, wrote on Twitter Sunday after exit polls showed that Macron, a centrist independent candidate, won the first round with 23.8 percent of the vote,...
By ALAN SMASON
Call it expected. Call it overdue. Just don’t call it Cajun. The 2017 Jazz Fest Shabbat to be held next Friday night, April 29, at Touro Synagogue will star accordionist Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes and the Louisiana Sunspots, marking the first time Zydeco performers be at the center of the annual music and religious celebration.
“First off the genre was exciting for us,” Cantor David Mintz explained the...
By ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
(JTA) — Of making many Passover Haggadahs there is no end.
If the Maxwell House version doesn’t cut it for you, there are Haggadahs for vegans, for children, for chocolate lovers and even for Christians. There’s the “Santa Cruz Haggadah” for hippies and the “New American Haggadah” for hipsters. There are annotated Haggadahs for those who want to extend the seder into the wee hours, and the “30 Minute Seder Haggada” for those...
By EDMON J. RODMAN
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — What kind of leadership style works best for a seder? During a period when we are experiencing a shake-up in national leadership, you may want to re-examine the relationship that exists between leader and participants at the Passover meal.
Though seder leaders and participants are not elected, there is still a seder mandate that governs your relationship: Everyone present — the wise, the wicked,...
By BEN SALES
NEW YORK (JTA) — After Donald Trump won the presidential election, Sheila Katz wasn’t sure she wanted to come home for Thanksgiving.
As the politically liberal member of a conservative family, she had been comfortable sparring with her relatives during the Obama administration. But as Thanksgiving approached, she found it hard to get over the fact that her parents had voted for Trump. During one particularly painful phone...
By DEAN M. SHAPIRO, SPECIAL TO THE CCJN
Although our current U.S. president was never mentioned by name during Wednesday evening’s one hour and fifteen minute panel discussion on the use of Nazi propaganda leading up to and during the Third Reich in Germany, the implications were unmistakably clear in the parallels that were drawn by the panelists between then and now.
The well-attended, open-to-the-public forum held in the Freedom...
By ALAN SMASON
The Jewish Children’s Regional Service (JCRS), the nation’s oldest children’s charity, held its annual event on April 1, with “Jewish Roots: Past, Present and Future” at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.
The “Jewish Roots” event was the sixth such annual event and has become the largest Jewish community event with a record number of 500 attendees, who hail from within the seven-state region that JCRS serves.
A cocktail...
