When fifth-grader Shayna Osterweil disagrees with someone, she tries to keep in mind what she learned at religious school about the Talmudic sages Hillel and Shammai, known for their civil discourse. If something is bothering third-grader Aliza Schumer, she may search for ways to be shalem — Hebrew for a sense of peace and wholeness. […]
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When Emily Austin was 16, a Holocaust education trip to Poland changed her life. The child of secular Israeli immigrants to New York, Austin grew up in Brooklyn and decided early on that being a Jew was important to her identity. But after the Poland trip, Jewish pride and combating antisemitism took center stage in […]
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Alon Tal is one of Israel’s leading environmentalists and a former member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. Now the chair of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Public Policy, Tal will be hosting a landmark conference at Stanford University in late May on lessons from Los Angeles and Tel Aviv in climate resilience and local government […]
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Halacha is this-worldly. It deals with the observable, grounds itself in facts and reality, and provides practical, detailed guidance for daily life. It acknowledges life’s messiness while directing us through conflicting demands and competing responsibilities to ourselves, our families, and our neighbors. This this-worldliness is so pronounced that halacha often frames religiosity in interpersonal terms. […]
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In 1974, Pamela Nadler Emmerich — then a teenager from Montreal — arrived in Jerusalem for her freshman year at Hebrew University. Not knowing what to expect, she signed up for a course on Jewish intellectualism, “Philosophical Implications of Rabbinic Thought,” taught by Montreal native Rabbi David Hartman. “After class, I went up and told […]
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Jamie Mafdali of South Florida was hit with a cancer double-whammy three years ago. Shortly after her mother began treatment for breast cancer and learned it had metastasized, Mafdali herself was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma in her left breast. Given her family history, Mafdali, now 45, decided to get a bilateral mastectomy. Although she […]
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At a time of heightened antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment, American Jews have been voting in record numbers in an election that will help determine how billions of dollars in Israel-related funding will be spent. The election for the World Zionist Congress, held every five years, provides the only democratic mechanism that gives Diaspora Jews a […]
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When Shoshana Polakoff was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019 at the age of 37, her life was suddenly turned upside down. With three young children at home and intense chemotherapy on the horizon, she felt overwhelmed. As Polakoff learned more about the road ahead, she realized that in addition to questions about her health […]
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Maddison Spiegel of Westchester County, New York, had tried for years to go on a Birthright trip to Israel but somehow it never happened. The first time she was supposed to go the COVID-19 pandemic got in the way, freezing all trips. The next time Spiegel applied she learned belatedly she had missed a deadline. […]
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When Russian troops invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Yuliia, 26, a Jewish single mother of three from Kherson, barely had time to flee her hometown before it fell to Russian control. After reaching relative safety in nearby Mykolaiv, Yuliia worried about how she’d support herself and her children. Previously a census taker for the […]
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