In Other Jewish Newspapers: Museum’s $100 Million, Muslim Builds Shul, Hoons vs. Jews
FOR THE GIRLS: New York Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt recalls his first granddaughter’s simchat bat — and asks why ceremonies welcoming newborn girls haven’t caught on with his fellow Orthodox Jews.
Also in the Jewish Week: With synagogue dues rising and members fleeing, an article explores whether congregations need to find a new ways of funding their activities. And Jonathan Mark scores The New York Times’ coverage of a controversial American Muslim group.
MILLIONS FOR MUSEUM: Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent reports that, with groundbreaking two weeks away, the National Museum of American Jewish History has raised $100 million of the $150 million needed to build its home. (Only a few weeks ago, in a biting column, Exponent executive editor Jonathan Tobin had — quite rightly — labeled the growing numbers of new Holocaust and Jewish history museums “monuments to our own colossal communal vanity.”)
REFORMATIVE YOUTH: In Santa Rosa, Calif., the struggling local Reform and Conservative youth groups merged — and found there’s strength in numbers, San Francisco’s J. reports.“Teens don’t think in terms of Reform and Conservative — they just want to be with other teens,” Rabbi George Gittleman of the Reform Congregation Shomrei Torah tells J.
Also in J.: Jewish life ain’t cheap.
MUSLIM BUILDS SHUL: The L.A. Jewish Journal reprints an article about a Palestinian contractor who donated his time to help build a synagogue in Fayetteville, Ark. “I’m hoping that what we’re doing here will be an example for others to follow around the U.S., and maybe this will be taken back to … Palestine and Israel,” said West Bank-born Fadil Bayyari, who has already built two churches and a mosque. “If we get along with each other here, respect each other, and have wonderful relationships, then maybe they want to do the same.”
Also in the Jewish Journal: Editor Rob Eshman relates the heartbreaking story of a long-lost friend.
WHEN ATHEISTS ATTACK: In London’s Jewish Chronicle, British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks takes on the new wave of anti-religion polemicists.
Also in the JC: British unions are growing weary of pro-Palestinian activists.
HOONS VS. JEWS: Australian Jews have recently come under attack from “hoons” and a “sledger.” Never let it be said that Australians and Americans speak the same language. (A “hoon,” apparently, is Aussie-speak for an anti-social driver, and, according to Wikipedia, is believed to be derived from “hooligan.” A “sledger,” it seems, is a trash-talking cricket player.)
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
