\”The primary purpose is to serve the needs of the Orthodox population,\” says Rabbi Ilan Haber, the program\’s national director, who works out of Hillel headquarters in Washington. \”It\’s not an outreach program, it\’s an in-reach to Orthodox students.\”
Weiss-Ishai is one of just a few female mohels in the United States. There are about 35 Reform female mohels and just four trained by the U.S. Conservative movement, as well as a handful who learned outside the United States.
Chaim is — or was — a Skver Chasid, born and raised in the ultra-Orthodox enclave of New Square, N.Y. His world until recently was Torah, family and a close-knit community.
But now he\’s entering the secular world.
How should Conservative Judaism cope with dwindling membership, growing intermarriage rates and society\’s increasing religious and political polarity, while remaining true to its base in halachah (Jewish law)?
Sixth-graders in America\’s most populous state will soon learn that Romans, not Jews, crucified Jesus.
The lesson could have been different had some of the textbooks approved by California last week gone through in their proposed form.
OK, we know some of the things that college students, especially college freshman, want. But put aside the clichés, the risqué jokes and careerism for a moment. It turns out that many Jewish undergrads also seek a connection both to Judaism and to Jewish peers.
It was in the summer of 2004 that Hillel began work on a five-year plan to attract the two-thirds of Jewish college students who say they don\’t go to Hillel activities. That troubling statistic has been one of the most talked-about findings from the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS).
Four years ago, the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles funded the joint project between Centinela and two L.A.-based Jewish groups, the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) and Beit T\’Shuvah, a Jewish recovery program.
Following the public criticism, 14 commissioners voted last Friday against adopting the Oxford materials, and one commissioner abstained. Their rejection came as a surprise, because a special review committee had recommended its adoption to the commission.
A new study of Jews in their 20s and 30s reveals that though these young people are underaffiliated with traditional institutions, many have a strongly defined Jewish identity that they express in creative new ways outside synagogues, Jewish Community Centers and the federation system.
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