Posted in The Rest of the World, Popular culture on Mar 17th, 2008
My 5-year-old son is really interested in holidays, especially ones that have special costumes. How do you explain St. Patrick’s Day to a Jewish boy–who lives in Boston? We passed people wearing green clothing and sparkly hats on the street yesterday, probably on their way to the famous St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which is the […]
Posted in The Rest of the World on Jan 17th, 2008
Keeping with the theme of island paradises, Ben Frank of JTA has written a story on the tiny Jewish community of Tahiti, where more than half of the Jews are intermarried.
The island is home to one Orthodox synagogue and while Shabbat services attract only about 20 regular worshippers, most of the island’s 200 Jews attend High […]
Posted in The Rest of the World, Israel on Nov 2nd, 2007
I was going to write about Reform Judaism magazine’s impressive package of articles on outreach, but I felt the need to respond to the latest instance of Abe Foxman-related controversy.
In the most recent issue of The (Boston) Jewish Advocate, Raphael Kohan reports on Boston Jewish leaders’ reaction to Abe Foxman’s Oct. 24 Q&A with JTA’s Ami Eden. In […]
Posted in The Rest of the World on Aug 29th, 2007
It’s been two weeks since Hurricane Dean left surprisingly little damage in Jamaica, a place filled with shoddily constructed housing and tenuous infrastructure. A few days after the storm, Paul Rockower wrote an essay for The Jerusalem Post about Jamaica’s “small, vibrant Jewish community” of 250-300.
Despite the community’s microscopic size–down from a one-time high […]
