Rebecca Spence
By Rebecca Spence
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News Reform Teens Seek Clean Space on Web
Keeping one’s good name is a central pillar of the Jewish faith. So too is refraining from gossip. But in the age of the Internet, where teenagers can spread rumors in mere nanoseconds and nearly everything goes on personal Web pages, upholding Jewish ethics — especially in cyberspace — poses a formidable challenge. But now,…
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News Divestment Flap Hits L.A. Union
The United Teachers Los Angeles found itself in the midst of a firestorm last week after Jewish organizations discovered that its human rights committee planned to co-host an October 14 meeting to initiate a campaign of divestment, boycott and sanctions against Israel. One day after meeting with a cadre of Jewish organizational leaders and fielding…
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News Bronfman ‘Kvells,’ Debuts New Holiday Services
If you’re going to atone for your sins, you might as well do it in comfort. And if you’re Edgar Bronfman, why not do it from the comfort of your own home? As New Yorkers packed into synagogues on the evening of Kol Nidre to reflect on their transgressions of the past year, some 100…
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News Israel Seeks To Raise Profile of African Aid
At a recent symposium promoting Israeli aid to Africa, the Nigerian ambassador to America reflected on what he had learned in his previous post as ambassador to the Jewish state. The greatest lesson he took from those four years, he said, is that self-confidence is the key to a nation’s success. Africans, he opined, should…
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News ‘The Israeli New Orleans’
The Olmert government is drawing harsh criticism from American Jewish philanthropists and Israeli officials for failing to coordinate relief efforts in northern Israel during the recent war in Lebanon, leaving the not-for-profit sector to shoulder an unfair share of the responsibility. Many observers compared the situation in Israel to America’s experience with Hurricane Katrina, where…
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News Liberal Rabbis Calling on Women To Take the Plunge for Ritual Purity
Top leaders of Conservative Judaism are promoting a plan to encourage female congregants to plunge regularly into a ritual bath, following the adoption last week of rabbinic guidelines by the movement’s central lawmaking body. At a September 13 meeting held in New York at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law…
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News Paper on Labor Issues Falls Short in Conservative Vote
A rabbinic opinion calling on Jewish business owners to pay their workers a living wage and hire union employees was stymied by the Conservative movement’s top lawmaking body after the opinion received fewer than the minimum number of votes needed for a paper to be approved. At last week’s meeting of the Rabbinical Assembly’s 25-member…
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News Filmmaker Hopes Passion for Esther Puts Jews and Christians in the Seats
“Touch your neighbor’s hand and say ‘destiny,’” Matthew Crouch implored the crowd, a microphone pressed to his lips. “We’re all Christians here,” he proclaimed, with the rousing cadence of a megachurch preacher. On a recent Friday afternoon some 200 churchgoers, seated in a movie theatre at the AMC Empire 25 multiplex in Times Square, did…
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