Park Avenue Synagogue’s senior cantor, Azi Schwartz, may already be leader at one of Manhattan’s most venerable Conservative congregations, but following a recent Shabbat service, it appears that the synagogue’s musical output may become even more… popular. On Dec. 7, Schwartz, along with his colleague, Assistant Cantor Mira Davis, premiered a new version of “Adon […]
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The famed architect Louis Kahn made little effort to live Jewishly in his life, yet throughout the 20th century he designed synagogues and famous Holocaust memorials across the country. The Hungarian Jewish designer Marcel Breuer, educated at the Bauhaus school, was forced to renounce his Judaism while he lived in Germany. Later he wowed Americans […]
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In “September 5,” the new movie depicting the abduction and murder of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Munich Olympics, there are many echoes of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, 51 years, and one month later. Both are historical tragedies involving the murder of Israelis by Palestinian terrorists; both involved the taking […]
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Three single Jewish men sat next to each other onstage. One nursed a mostly-empty beer and scratched his graying stubble while another readjusted his kippah. To their right, separated by a blue divider, the bachelorette — wearing hot pink pants and sorting through a stack of cue cards — sat on her own. Those in […]
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This article was produced as part of (JR)’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives. Spending a semester in Israel in 2023 was life-changing for Leora Schonbrun. At Tichon Ramah Yerushalayim, a high school program run by the Ramah organization, her feelings […]
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This article was produced as part of (JR)’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives. “How does it feel to be on the wrong side of history?” These were the words flung at a student wearing a Star of David necklace by […]
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This article was produced as part of (JR)’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives. I’ve never been very good at math. Or science. During the pandemic, I was online for most of my seventh grade year at my public middle school […]
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Israeli-American filmmaker Nim Shapira was in his hometown of Tel Aviv celebrating Simchat Torah and his mother’s birthday on Oct. 7, 2023. That morning, he woke up to rockets, and watched the news in horror as the number of casualties and hostages rose. It was a harrowing, life-changing experience. But it was how the ensuing […]
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Yes, Hanukkah is “late” this year — in 2024, the holiday begins the evening of Wednesday, Dec. 25, and the last candle on the hanukkiah will be lit on the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 1. But for all the impatient party people among us, we have good news: This year’s festivities start long before Hanukkah […]
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To celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas, Max and Sophie, siblings in an interfaith family, bake up a batch of gingerbread dreidels. That’s the plot of a new children’s book out this year, but it could be a real-life occurrence this month, when the first night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Day. Among the children’s books released […]
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