Financial problems and stress almost forced Benjamin S. to drop out of college last year. “Some days I just wouldn’t eat because I didn’t have any cash on me,” said Benjamin, a student at Baruch College in New York who asked that his full name not be used to protect his privacy. But thanks to […]
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Working at MTV is not typical training for a Jewish day school teacher. But Oren Kaunfer is no ordinary Jewish teacher. The New England native had a successful career in television before deciding he wanted a more meaningful job. Kaunfer, the son of a prominent Conservative rabbi from Providence, Rhode Island, enjoyed the creativity of […]
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It’s not easy getting teens to think about God. Even if they go to Jewish day school. When one Jewish educational organization asked day school students in middle school and high school several years ago to respond to the question, “What percentage of your time in Judaic studies do you spend talking explicitly about God?”, […]
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KIBBUTZ EREZ, Israel — Under the shade of a large tree on Kibbutz Erez less than a mile from the Gaza Strip, half a dozen Israeli children play history trivia games with a counselor. When loud booms from Gaza echo across the sky, some of the kids flinch at the noise. It’s a reminder of […]
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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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