Is America a great country, or what? By the time Joe Lieberman (Yale \’64, Yale Law \’67) had propelled himself upward by means of first-class education, the country had changed dramatically. Kennedy had succeeded where his Roman Catholic predecessor, Al Smith, had failed.
The JOFA conference brought together some 700 women and 300 men for a weekend of religious activism and scholarly lectures on the question of tzeniut, a mix of modesty and dignity, and other aspects of communal life, all gathered under the rubric \”Discovering/Uncovering/Recovering Women in Judaism.\”
One of the most depressing of the many depressing aspects of the second year of the new millennium has been the resurgence of anti-Semitism and the importation into Islam of anti-Semitic motifs that were abandoned and discredited in the post-Holocaust Christian world.
New York, December 2102:
Historians argue as to the precise moment when the Golden Age of American Jewry we now take for granted truly began. But many point to the cancellation of the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS), a century ago, in 2002 as a turning point — an event still shrouded in mystery that became a catalyst for a series of changes even the wisest sage could not have predicted at the time.
It\’s not only that this year Thanksgiving and Chanukah coincide, it\’s that the calendar makes us focus on the thanksgiving aspect of Chanukah\’s meaning.
Stephen Hoffman said he only learned of the missing data Tuesday, one week before the information from the NJPS about Jewish identity and intermarriage was due to get released at the annual UJC gathering, which brings together much of the organized American Jewish world.
Actor-writer Doug Kaback never belonged to a synagogue while growing up in a non-Jewish area of Palos Verdes. He didn\’t receive any religious education or become a bar mitzvah.
How did I find myself at the Beverly Hills Police Department, eating an apple and crying?
Jessica Freedman felt like neither fish nor fowl while pursuing her degree in Jewish studies at UCLA, and her social life was even less uplifting. During Rush Week on campus, Freedman looked into joining a Jewish-founded sorority.
What\’s the difference between ignorance and apathy? The answer to the old joke — "I don\’t know and I don\’t care" — has often been used to define young Americans of the past decade.
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