On June 3, 1972, Rabbi Sally Priesand was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion as the first woman rabbi in North America. To celebrate this milestone in Jewish and American history, HUC's Dr. Bernard Heller Museum in New York partnered with The Braid's Story Archive of Women Rabbis in Los Angeles to create the exhibition "Holy Sparks," presenting 24 ground-breaking women rabbis who were "firsts" in their time.
As many Ukrainian Jews know this year, Passover will be different in 2022. We sat down with Ukrainian Jewish community leader Andy (he/him), 27, to discuss what the community and holiday will look like in the context of current events.
Amy Spitalnick is the executive director of Integrity First for America (IFA), the civil rights nonprofit behind Sines v. Kessler - the successful federal lawsuit against the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and hate groups responsible for the violent "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. I sat down with Amy, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, to get her views on the significance of this lawsuit.
On November 9, we will mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass), the Third Reich's first large-scale attack on the Jews of Germany and Austria in 1938.
This is not yet the America most of us dream of, but it is an unavoidable part of our DNA. American equality and exceptionalism are checks that are still in the mail. If we truly love what this country is capable of, we must continue to speak the hard truth to power.
In Hebrew, two terms describe two different aspects of nationalism. Leumiut directly translates to “nationalism"; leumanut carries a jingoistic, chauvinistic, supremacist, and extremist brand of nationalism.
Jewish tradition comes down decidedly on the side of science. One of the primary values in Jewish legal thought: Pikuach nefesh, saving a life, overrides almost every other religious mitzvah.