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Read the entire issue of the RJ Insider's Guide to World Jewish Travel.
Lessons about faith in Auschwitz.
Meeting my Reform brethren in Warsaw, Budapest, and Prague.
Best sightseeing and dining, and Buenos Aires' model Jewish community.
Interview with Alvin Kushner, regional chairman of the Cape Town Progressive Jewish Congregation, vice chairman of the South African Union for Progressive Judaism, chairman of the SA Jewish...
Aron and Judith experienced a Jewish community the likes of which are not to be found anywhere else in the world.
Stéphane Beder, president of the Federation of French-Speaking Liberal Jews, talks about what it's like to be a Jew in France today and shares tips on the best sightseeing and dining in Paris.
Best sightseeing, Jews in Australian history, and Jewish life in Melbourne today.
I have begun a year-long sabbatical in Berlin, one of the places on Earth I never imagined I would live.
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Luis de Carvajal, the younger, was not a typical Jewish hero. He did not establish a rabbinic dynasty; in fact, he has no known direct descendants. No one alive today knew him or was moved to take...
The alluring beauty, pristine beaches, ideal climate, and music festivals make Barbados one of the world's top winter tourist spots. What's more, this easternmost Caribbean island offers Jewish...
Does Canadian Jewry have a unique character as opposed to American Jewry?
Nova Scotia has much to offer the Jewish traveler. Our weeklong journey began in the port city of Halifax, known as the gateway to Canada—where, from 1928 to 1971, more than one million immigrants...
Last June, we returned to the enchanting city where, almost 30 years ago, we stood together under an outdoor chuppah. Our sightseeing began at Vancouver's renovated international airport, which...
This past summer I served as a chaperone for the North American Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY)'s Dor L'Dor ("generation to generation") program, which in 2011 brought 378 high school students to...
In December 1896, Rabbi Solomon Schechter stepped into the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt-and found the largest treasure trove of ancient and medieval manuscripts ever discovered:...
The following is adapted from the journal Rabbi Ruth Sohn kept during her family's stay in Cairo, Egypt from January to July 2006. She (a Jewish studies faculty member at Milken Community High...
This discussion and study guide to The Arabic Lesson contains an article summary, Big Ideas to consider, questions for discussion, a bibliography, and more.A. Overview The Hebrew word shalom,...
Liberal Judaism in France, which just marked its 100th anniversary, is more vibrant than ever before. France's 14 synagogues are all full for Shabbat services, rent large concert halls to...
The Holocaust horror stories my parents told me as a young child forced me to shoulder a heavy emotional load. First I contemplated revenge against the Nazis. Later I tried escape into normalcy by...
Thousands of Germans are documenting, restoring, and perpetuating the memory of Jewish life and culture before the Nazis took power.In the early 1930s, about two hundred Jews lived in Siegen, a...
The director of publications at the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, Dr. Houman Sarshar is the editor of three volumes of The History of Contemporary Iranian Jews and, most recently, ...
Revolution. Everything in Iran changed on February 1, 1979, the day Ayatollah Khomeini returned to our country a few days after the departure of the Shah. Suddenly, millions were demanding an end...
Baghdad, June 22, 2004. Just days before the Coalition Provisional Authority is scheduled to return power to Iraqi control, four Iraqi Jews--two in their forties, two elderly--inconspicuously board...
Tamara Ruben, the education director of Temple Emanu-El in Westfield, New Jersey, was born in Iraq in June 1950, only two weeks before her family, along with thousands of other Iraqi Jews, fled...
Did you ever imagine that you might one day serve as rabbi in Warsaw?Actually, for years I had entertained the fantasy of serving in Poland, the land of my family's roots. In the mid-1970s, my...
Jedwabne, Poland-July 10, 2001. The market square is like a movie set. A makeshift stage awaits the principal actor in this historic drama--Aleksander Kwasniewski, president of the Polish Republic....
Seventeen years ago, I discovered the horrible fate that had befallen twenty-six of my relatives. On July 10, 1941, just days after Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and took over northeastern...
So there we were, a rabbi and several dozen Eskimos, all struggling valiantly with an ancient Aramaic prayer. The people of Kotzebue were struggling because they didn't know the language and still...
I have avoided Germany for almost 15 years. My last visit was a business trip in 1985 when I was asked by my studio to help promote a Star Trek film, my first feature film as a director. The visit...
Travel abroad and you’ll witness, as I have, the wonders of Jewish rebirth and resilience in places where Judaism was once on the edge of extinction—and now is on the ascent!When I visited Poland...
While I thought I had an awareness of my purpose, a new one was revealed to me this past summer when my two daughters, Alexis, 28, and Shaina, 25, and I visited Vienna, the city where my father...
Now 80 years old, Progressive Judaism has a credible record here. It reached a seeming high point about mid-way along that timeline; the period since the violent Soweto student uprising in 1976 has...
Rabbi Lennard Thal, senior vice president emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism, has served as visiting rabbi of United Hebrew Congregation in Singapore for the past 20 years.
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In 2010 the new Hungarian government enacted hundreds of new laws, one of which abolished the religious status of hundreds of congregations, including Budapest’s two Progressive communities.
Rabbi Leonid Bimbat is rabbi of Congregation Le-Dor va-Dor in Moscow.
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Harry A. and Barbara Tasch Ezratty are both past presidents of Temple Beth Shalom. Harry is also author of 500 Years in the Jewish Caribbean; Barbara is a food writer and book publisher.
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In Rio, the biggest congregation is Reform, the 900-family Associação Religiosa Israelita (ARI). Founded by German Jews in 1942, it now attracts Jews of all kinds drawn to modernity, egalitarianism...
Rosh HaShanah in Bali, and I was sitting in the rain watching the Ramayana, a traditional dance, after a dinner of lamb kabobs. Could this be kosher?
How does one locate and contact a Progressive/Reform/Liberal congregation when travelling outside of North America?
They told me that trying to open the largest archive of inaccessible Holocaust-related documents would be like tilting at windmills….Too much resistance, too little compassion.
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If it’s your custom to attend Friday night services, here’s how you can seek out a Reform congregation when you’re on the road, whether for business or pleasure.
Being Jewish in Russia is still a difficult choice, and being a Progressive Jew even more so. Although the fall of the Soviet Union freed its citizens to practice religion, the vast majority are...
Some 40,000-50,000 Israelis travel to India each year (many of them "unwinding" in the country after completing military service), and are a very visible presence in the country. In some outlying...
