Friday, March 29th 2024   |

Featured Article

After much prodding, Trump condemns anti-Semitism

(JTA) — President Donald Trump denounced anti-Semitism a day after bomb threats to at least 10 Jewish community centers across the country and a large-scale cemetery vandalism in the St. Louis area.

Under pressure to condemn anti-Semitism in the wake of what has been called an uptick in incidents since he was elected, Trump told MSNBC on Tuesday morning, “Anti-Semitism is horrible and it’s going to stop, and it has...

NBA All-Stars honor Tal Brody at film showing

By ALAN SMASON

The National Basketball Association (NBA) held its All-Star weekend in New Orleans February 18-19 for the second time in three years and, due to the efforts of the Maccabi USA organization, Israeli basketball legend and Goodwill Ambassador Tal Brody returned to the Crescent City once again.

Brody, who was featured in a CCJN article three years ago, is called “Mr. Basketball” in Israel and is the subject...

Tulane ‘Shabbat 1000’ biggest to date

By JOSH AXELROD, Special to the CCJN

At Tulane University, a school where 27 percent of the student body is comprised of Jews, Shabbat, is no minor matter. Yet, despite the hundreds of students who show up to weekly dinners, Rabbi Leibel Lipskier, the undergraduate director of the Rohr Chabad Student Center decided to raise the bar.

For the ninth year in a row, Shabbat 1000, an annual Chabad-sponsored event,...

Trump and Netanyahu: What exactly are friends for?

By RON KAMPEAS

WASHINGTON (JTA) – One state! Flexibility! Two states! Hold back on settlements! Stop Iran!

When President Donald Trump met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — What a press conference!

But wait.

In the Age of Trump, every post-event analysis requires a double take: Not so much “did he mean what he said?” – he appears to mean it, in real time – but “will he mean it next...

Campaign successful for ‘Be Heard,” Nick May’s dream album

With little more than a half day before cancellation, a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to cover the expenses for a new studio recording and the eventual release by community member Nick May, reached and exceeded its goal. By raising more than $8,000, backers have assured that May will be releasing his 10-song album, “Be Heard” on compact disc and over digital platforms.

Kickstarter campaigns created on the popular funding website must...

Rabbi Silver prepares for her installation weekend

By ALAN SMASON, Special to the CCJN

It is not by accident that Rabbi Deborah Silver,  the first female Conservative pulpit rabbi in New Orleans, is having her installation occur over this Shabbat weekend that also corresponds to the celebration of Tu B’Shevat.

Part of the dinner tonight for her synagogue members at Shir Chadash Conservative Congregation, 3737 West Esplanade Avenue, involves taking part in a special seder for the...

Local clergy react to Orthodox Union ruling that bars women clergy

By JTA and CCJN Staff

Local clergy reacted to a new policy from the Orthodox Union (OU) barring women from serving as clergy at its 400 member congregations across the United States.

Adopted at a board meeting Feb. 1 and reported Thursday in the Forward, the ruling cites Jewish law, or halacha (Jewish legal tradition), in declaring that “a woman should not be appointed to serve in a clergy position.”

The ruling...

Shepards receive L’Chayim Award at Touro

By JOSH AXELROD, CCJN Staff Reporter

Touro Synagogue honored husband and wife power duo Hal and Kathy Shepard with the presentation of the congregation’s annual L’Chayim Award on Sunday evening, January 29. The gala event held in the social hall was catered by Shaya, the Israeli restaurant named both by the James Beard Foundation and Esquire magazine as “the best new restaurant in America.”

A lively crowd of approximately 170...

Dansker lecture features opera star, cantor

By ALAN SMASON

For the seventh time, George Dansker, an opera enthusiast and Broadway musical expert, presented a lecture on one of the major Jewish composers of popular and theatre music, this past Friday, January 20 at Touro Synagogue.

Dansker corrects himself and admits that he has actually done nine lectures. “Two of them were on opera and Russian and Yiddish music,” he says “so this is the seventh Broadway...

New exhibit on Nazi propaganda opens at WW2 Museum

By ALAN SMASON

How did Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, a ragtag group of rough and tumble disenfranchised citizens, use propaganda to transform themselves from a political joke to the supreme political party in Germany in just a few short years?

This question and several others are posed with the arrival of the latest traveling exhibit from the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., “State of Deception: The Power of...