Tag: Jewish community

“Oh. I was just thinking about you. How was your day?” Ruti’s mother asked her the minute she walked through the door. “Fine, Mommy.”

A new poll finds that two-thirds of the Dutch people are opposed to their prime minister apologizing to the Jewish community for the misconduct of the wartime government in exile in London.

Peeking her head into her daughter’s preschool classroom, Shayna heard Morah Esther singing a melodic song while the children clapped their hands and stomped their feet.

Last week I shared a letter from a 30-plus young woman who was very troubled over the challenges confronting singles. She felt the Jewish community was not sufficiently engaged in reaching out to and helping the many singles desperately looking for their soul mates.

Years ago, a young man, who I will call Baruch, came to see me as his parents were concerned about his recent test scores.

Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nevada) was a special luncheon guest over Chol HaMoed Sukkos in the Los Angeles sukkah of Barbara and Stanley Treitel. Berkley, a U.S. Senate candidate, thanked the Jewish community for inviting her and hearing her views on Israel and related matters.

Sara is pulling straight A's in all of her classes. She scores high grades on most of her exams and tests. You would think that she and her parents would be thrilled with her progress. But Sara is struggling in school despite her academic excellence. Socially, she is a wreck. While all the other girls easily group together during recess she has few friends, little social contact, and she is generally reclusive and shy around classmates and teachers.

“In all the years that I have been involved with helping Avi Mekonen, I could never look at his face directly because of how badly disfigured he was. I always found a way to avoid looking at him straight in the face.

There is an element in the Occupy Wall Street movement that should concern the Jewish community. It is not that this so-called people’s protest against alleged corporate greed and banking industry excess has become defined by several anti-Semitic signs in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park and some movement-related videos that have surfaced. It hasn’t.

Living in New York is getting tougher and tougher. No matter how carefully some of us planned, much of our retirement savings and investments have been dwindling away. Additionally, many of my neighbors are scared that the benefits they have paid into for years - Social Security and Medicare - may be taken away.

With Columbia University having recently established the very first Center for Palestine Studies (CPS), the Jewish community - especially Jewish donors - has failed miserably. We have been sleeping at the wheel for way too long.

Shaindy and Tova have both just earned their degrees and are eager to enter the job market. Both young women are highly qualified, and both are well equipped with impressive resumes and a long list of prestigious references. But while Shaindy finds employment almost instantly, Tova finds herself wandering aimlessly from one interview to another, never quite landing the job that she's looking for. What's the difference between the two young ladies? Shaindy prepared herself for the interview process in advance. She knew how to present herself and what to say. Tova, unfortunately, did not.

In our day, when news events do not always portray the Jewish community in the most favorable light, it is imperative that we have role models we can emulate. The recent passing of a famous legal scholar brings to mind two individuals who personify this description.

I was in Brazil, speaking to the Jewish community of Sao Paulo, when the sad news of the petira of Irene Klass reached me. Many memories, many scenes, many conversations and experiences flashed through my mind. With Irene's passing, a whole era - a whole way of thinking, of values, of goals, of idealism - disappeared. Irene had a sense of mission and never allowed politics, petty jealousies or territorial considerations to influence her.

Every year Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews raises about $100 million, mostly from evangelical Christians in the United States, for distribution to social-welfare projects in Israel and the former Soviet Union. This is a staggering sum, making the fellowship arguably the largest foundation for Jews in need in the world.

An unparalleled musical production featuring 39 Jewish music superstars made its worldwide debut Thursday at the Jewish Children's Museum in Crown Heights. "Unity for Justice" is a unique display of solidarity for the family of incarcerated Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin, whose sentencing of 27 years in federal prison last year has led to a thunderous outcry by the Jewish community and a number of government officials. The project serves as an innovative campaign for financial support of the Rubashkin Defense Fund, drawing mounting online interest by the hour.

Lately, Yocheved has been waking up at night worrying about her daughter, Shevi. Shevi is pursuing a degree in speech therapy. Yocheved knows that Shevi has always been an A student and that she will succeed in all academic areas. She is already doing great work with stroke victims as they attempt to gain back their speech. Shevi's teachers report to Yocheved that all of the people she works with immediately take to her, pushing themselves to work harder because they want to impress her. So, why does Shevi have so much trouble going on dates?

Anyone reading this well-researched and objective biography (just translated into Hebrew) has to be struck by how the focus of Rabbi Meir Kahane's life was on promoting Jewish identity, pride, values, knowledge, and even music, and how minimal a role that actual violence played even in the "militant" Jewish Defense League. Even the limited violence was for deterrence and limited primarily to property damages.

Anyone reading this well-researched and objective biography (just translated into Hebrew) has to be struck by how the focus of Rabbi Meir Kahane's life was on promoting Jewish identity, pride, values, knowledge, and even music, and how minimal a role that actual violence played even in the "militant" Jewish Defense League. Even the limited violence was for deterrence and limited primarily to property damages.

In a bustling fifth grade class Moshe is listening to a tape-recorded reading of President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, while Shmuel is writing a poem about a fight between brothers. Next to Moshe and Shmuel, Yerucham is reading an account of a former African-American slave.

Kaboom! That's what we experience when there is an explosion. And that's exactly what we feel like when we are dealing with an "explosive" child. For those of you who don't understand what I'm talking about, consider yourselves blessed. But those who know exactly what it means for a child to "explode" for no apparent reason understand what a tremendous challenge this is. It's like living inside a simmering volcano. As one frustrated mother put it, "We are in a perpetual state of crisis."

This summer 17 Yeshiva University students participated in the Center for the Jewish Future's New Orleans Service Mission. As part of the mission students had the opportunity to engage members of the community ravaged by Hurricane Katrina just five years ago learn about their current challenges and help rebuild.

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It is a testament to the authenticity and devotion of the staff at Our Place - a group of drop-in centers in Flatbush that cater to what most people would simply term "at-risk" teens - that none of them wanted to be mentioned by name in this article. In fact, the majority of them were even cautious about speaking with a reporter, so protective are they of their children, whom they consider very nearly their own.

Perhaps it was inevitable. Ever since her address at the Republican National Convention two years ago, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been popular among many Orthodox Jews. A month after the convention, a "Sarah Palin Wig" went on sale on Sheitel.com. Now, as worry increases in the Jewish community over President Obama's Middle East policies, a group of Jews have banded together to create Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin (JewsforSarah.com).

With Pesach behind us, what better time to take a closer look at the annual burst of intensity that propelled us, in the weeks and days leading to the yom tov, into a frenzy of cleaning? That sustained embrace of scrupulous cleaning offers insight into a subject that has lately received a great deal of attention in psycho-educational literature. The topic, OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, might be understood by comparing it with that exhausting endeavor from which many of us are just starting to recover.

Two months into the school year, Shonnie's enthusiasm for school inexplicably took a nose dive. Her morning routines seemed to take her forever. The 7 year-old reacted to her mother's exasperation by turning sulky and tearful. With increasing frequency she missed the bus and needed to be driven to school.

More than 500 people dedicated a new Torah scroll in the Long Island town of Woodmere, N.Y., last Sunday, a little more than one year after the sudden passing of a nine-year-old sent shock waves through the tight-knit Jewish community.

Most people don't think much about their socks, but for eight-year-old Suri W., they are all-important today. The seams at her toes are terribly irritating. Suri spent an inordinate amount of time this morning getting them into a perfect position. But now, three hours later, they apparently shifted. The teacher's voice has receded into the background; a friend's request for a pencil has gone unheeded. The itch has taken over.

WASHINGTON - Opinion polls are expected to provide a simple answer to an important question: What are the people thinking? But the details often reveal a much more complicated picture.