Kneading for The Needy

By Robin Migdol September 27, 2011

It’s an idea so simple you may wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself: Grab a few friends and bake some deliciously eggy challah, then sell it and donate the proceeds to help feed the hungry around the world.
That idea was the inspiration behind Challah for Hunger, an organization with chapters at 44 colleges and universities across America–and two in Australia–dedicated to making and selling the much-loved traditional Shabbat bread to raise money for hunger and disaster relief organizations. CfH was founded in 2004 by students at the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of seven liberal arts colleges in Southern California. So far, the have raised over $250,000.

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New Year, New Hillel Machzor

By David A.M. Wilensky September 27, 2011

The High Holidays are upon us, and so is a newly updated and expanded edition of the Hillel machzor (High Holidays prayer book), “On Wings of Awe.” The original 1985 edition was ground-breaking in its inclusion of transliterations for many prayers, which was then a rarity even among liberal Jewish prayer books; the new edition’s cover boldly proclaims itself “A Fully Transliterated Machzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.”
While Bernard Scharfstein, vice president of “On Wings of Awe” publisher Ktav, told me, “We sold maybe 1,000 a year; it’s not a bestseller,” it has been a constant presence in many Hillels and in a handful of congregations for many years.
I spoke on the phone recently with the editor of both editions, Rabbi Richard Levy, about what makes “Wings” a Hillel machzor, what has changed in the new edition and how worship has changed over the last quarter-century.

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Irvine 11, Abbas at the UN, and some proud young Jews | Parsing

By Harpo Jaeger September 27, 2011

The Irvine 11 were convicted on Friday of conspiring to disrupt and then disrupting a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine.  Our own Gabe Schivone interviewed one of them, Taher Herzallah. Making the rounds online: a nifty graphic showing which countries will support the PA’s statehood bid at the U.N. Finally, Jewish…

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