How Pennsylvania Can Prevent the Next Holocaust

By Derek M. Kwait November 8, 2013

My high school taught about the Holocaust in English class. It was part of the unit on Elie Weisel’s Night, which is required reading for students entering tenth grade. I remember the Holocaust was nothing more than a picture of Jews in a concentration camp with an explanatory caption in my AP European history textbook….

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Pew Survey Conversation (Part 3)

By Derek M. Kwait October 30, 2013

Part 3 in a 3 part series. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. 7.      What are your reactions to survey respondents’ answers to “What does it mean to be Jewish”? What creates Jewish meaning for you? Dr. Steven M. Cohen, sociologist: These questions pertain to areas of great ambiguity. I wouldn’t…

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Meet Steve, Sarah, Eliana, and Jonathan.

Pew Survey Conversation (Part 2)

By Derek M. Kwait October 29, 2013

Part 2 of a 3 part series. Part 1 is here. 4.      Are the survey’s categories of denomination a useful marker of determining true religious affiliation/practice in today’s Jewish world? Dr. Steven M. Cohen, sociologist: Yes. Denominational identities can be meaningful for people as many are strongly attached to Orthodoxy, Conservatism, Reform, and Reconstructionism. But…

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Meet Diane von Furstenberg [Celebrities]

By lkatz March 5, 2012

Legendary fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg’s mother was in Auschwitz 18 months before she was born. Born Diane Simone Michelle Halfin on December 31, 1946 in Belgium, her parents, Leon and Liliane Halfin, were both Jewish. Her mother’s greatest gift to her was the conviction that “fear is not an option,” Von Furstenberg said at an United…

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The Cordoba Initiative is Not Jewish

By Ben Sales August 4, 2010

I’m not sure if other people know this, but the community center/mosque that New York City just approved for construction is not a Jewish project. Given the public statements on the center from the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League and J Street–all leading Jewish American organizations–your Jew on the street could assume that this was…

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Jews in Small Places

By Ben Sales December 8, 2009

A dog in Montana speaks Hebrew. That could have been the first sentence of a recent NYTimes article that used a vignette about an ex-IDF German shepherd living in Helena as the lead-in to a story about the small but surviving Jewish population in the Treasure State. The article spent perhaps an inordinate amount of…

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I Refuse to Title This Post with a Pun about Bees

By thellmann July 23, 2009

For the last couple of years, I have been slowly developing a passion for honey bees, fueled by a combination of delicious varieties of local honey, a passion for sustainable agriculture, and a fascination with the inner workings of bee hives. When I returned to New York City I decided to look for a venue…

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Scammed by a Jew during the Three Weeks

By Ben Sales July 21, 2009

An Israeli stole $300 from me yesterday. Said Israeli, whose name–I have since learned–is not Avi Levi, played me for the cash under the pretense of needing medicine money for his sick 10-year old daughter, who had flo4from Israel to Maryland for kidney surgery the day before. He needed the medicine before flying back, he…

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“Oh, So That’s Why You Look So Exotic!” Musings of an Iraqi-Persian Jewess

By Lisa Aslan December 14, 2005

Walking through the crowded shuk on a Friday morning in Ramleh, an Arab and Jewish town in the center of Israel, I heard a familiar tune blasting from a dated boom box up ahead. I was suddenly taken back to Magen David, the Sephardic and Mizrachi shul I went to as a kid. I looked…

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