Rebecca Spence
By Rebecca Spence
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Israel News Stallone’s Passion
Hollywood, it seems, has found religion. First came “The Passion of the Christ,” which broke new ground in bringing Christian themes to the box office. Now there’s “The Nativity Story,” which was screened amid much fanfare at the Vatican last week, and later this month there’ll be… “Rocky Balboa.” To publicize his latest “Rocky” sequel,…
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News Conservative Rabbis To Decide on Gay Unions, Ordination
As leaders of Conservative Judaism prepare to gather for the long-awaited vote on ordaining gay rabbis and sanctioning same-sex unions, a prominent liberal rabbi has thrown a wild card into the mix with the last-minute submission of a radically different proposal. The widespread assumption in recent months has been that the movement’s 25-member lawmaking body…
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News Funds Flow South as Sderot Flees
As Qassam rockets launched at Israel from Gaza continue to terrorize residents of Sderot, the slow trickle of charitable dollars that previously flowed into the Jewish state’s poverty-stricken southern region is poised to become a tidal wave. Last week, Russian Israeli billionaire Arkady Gaydamak set a high bar for philanthropic giving in Israel’s south when…
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News Federations Set To Push Agency On Ethiopians
The national arm of North American Jewish charitable federations is stepping up pressure on the Israeli agency responsible for immigration to take over a camp in Ethiopia, where thousands of would-be immigrants are waiting for permission to enter the Jewish state. Signaling its frustration with government inaction, United Jewish Communities is pressing the Jewish Agency…
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News Service Groups Gripe as Charity Focuses on Israel
LOS ANGELES – The annual convention of American Jewish charitable federations, meeting here this week, spent most of its time examining the fate of Israel, pleasing the Israeli politicians in attendance but angering a broad swath of social service providers and federation leaders who decried the lack of attention to pressing domestic concerns confronting North…
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News Israeli: ‘No Future’ for U.S. Jews
While Israeli politicians showed up in record numbers this week at the annual assembly of North American Jewish charitable federations to laud the Jewish community for its fundraising efforts and to emphasize global Jewish unity, one top Israeli official took the occasion to insult Diaspora Jewry. On the eve of the 75th annual General Assembly…
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Culture Nonprofits Mull Staff Shortages
After years of working with some of the most promising organizations in the rapidly expanding field of Jewish nonprofits, the staff at one of America’s largest Jewish family foundations noticed a disturbing trend: While dynamic and creative groups were cropping up everywhere, injecting Jewish communal life with renewed passion and commitment, the people needed to…
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Culture Funding Fuels Group Homes’ Growth
Call it a throwback to communal housing in Berkeley in the 1960s. Or a Jewish take on the long-running MTV reality show “The Real World,” where a bunch of strangers in their 20s are housed under one roof. Or something in between. Whatever the comparison, Moishe Houses, group homes for young Jews who have finished…
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