With the holidays and the congressional interregnum, Washington has been a quiet place in recent weeks. But that quiet belies feverish behind-the-scenes planning as political partisans and advocacy groups get set for a particularly contentious legislative session.
Under IDEA, students who require special services — such as speech therapy, sign language interpreters or resource teachers — must receive them by attending local public schools. Although some parents have successfully negotiated or even sued to allow their child to attend a private school and still receive financial support from their district for those services, for the most part, parents who want their child to receive a religious education must pay for additional services themselves.
Shema Educational Institute\’s Web site shows photos of typical Orthodox Jews: a father studying with his sons, a frum mother holding her infant and a man unrolling a Torah scroll. But in that last photo, the Orthodox man is standing next to a Korean man in traditional Korean dress.
With many health care programs threatened because of cutbacks in government funding, Jessica Toledano and other members of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles\’ advocacy arm have redoubled their work on behalf of the elderly, immigrants and other vulnerable groups. In at least three recent instances, those efforts have paid off and saved imperiled programs from debilitating cuts or untimely demises.
Nearly a decade after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, his daughter fears that Israeli society has not yet faced up to the underlying causes of the horrifying crime by a Jewish extremist.
When it comes to helping victims of the Southeast Asian tsunami, the American Jewish World Service (AJWS) is taking the adage, \”teach a man how to fish,\” quite literally.
As part of its long-term relief efforts for victims of the Dec. 26 tragedy, the group is working with its partner organizations in the region, including the Sanghamitra Service Society in Andhra Pradesh, India, which helps local fishing communities with sustainable development and disaster preparedness. The philosophy behind the group\’s post-tsunami effort is the same as that behind general AJWS operations — long-term efforts through collaboration with groups in the region.
Ten minutes after the tsunami hit, my phone started ringing. It\’s been ringing ever since, 24 hours a day — husbands looking for wives, mothers looking for daughters, friends looking for their traveling companions.
I was on the island of Koh Lanta on Dec. 26. Koh Lanta is just east of Phuket and Ko Phi Phi Island and part of the province of Krabi, Thailand.
The island is made up of Muslims, Christians and Buddhists. I had visited this small island earlier in the year, and was blown away both by the kindness of all the inhabitants, as well as its natural beauty.
Local and national Jewish organizations have mobilized to help tsunami victims and invite the community to participate, as well.\n\n
Several times during my visit with Rabbi Karmi Gross at Maimonides Academy, coaches and kids came to pull balls out of the corner of his tiny office in a prefab building smack in the middle of the schoolyard.
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