McDonald\’s and Starbucks are just the tip of the iceberg. This afternoon, head to the Skirball for their screening of \”Looking for America.\” The film documents some of the millions of ways in which American culture has seeped into the indigenous societies of more than 30 countries around the world.
When Melissa Hanna won the $250,000 grand prize on ABC\’s \”The Scholar\” Monday, she felt shocked but ecstatic.
There is a new twist to the contentious question of who is really a Jew. John C. Haedrich, who claims that his DNA proves his Ashkenazi descent, is challenging the State of Israel to recognize his Jewishness under the Law of Return.
David Margolis, who lived and chronicled the transformation of an American hippie of the 1960s into a deeply spiritual resident of a West Bank settlement, died July 17 at the age of 62.
This year, the 17th of Tammuz falls on Sunday, July 24. This is a fast day — no eating, no drinking.
If someone had turned on the radio in Mulukuku, Nicaragua, on May 28, 2005, they would have heard \”Hatikvah,\” the Israeli national anthem. There is no Jewish community in this village of 7,000. In fact, there is not normally even a single Jew. But for one week at the end of May, there were 14 of us.
Our group was in the most impoverished region of Nicaragua as part of a joint project between The Jewish Federation and American Jewish World Service. The goal: to help alleviate poverty, hunger and disease among all the people of the world. It was an imperative that I took very seriously, and one that compelled me to step out of my Los Angeles life of privilege and material comfort into a world where those two terms are largely devoid of meaning.
A year after the U.N.-affiliated International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that Israel\’s West Bank security barrier was illegal, controversy over the section in and around Jerusalem could spark new international pressure on the Jewish state to change the fence route or stop construction altogether.
The mid-August Israeli pullout from Gaza is fraught with risks and unknowns, but the Israeli government remains committed to \”unilateral disengagement,\” says Daniel Ayalon, Israel\’s ambassador to the United States.
A wave of recent gatherings has tackled the existential questions facing world Jewry, and many are aimed at or driven by new actors. The slew of new forums focusing on the future of the Jewish people reveals a certain angst about today\’s challenges and raises questions about how much faith Jews have in existing institutions to address those challenges.
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