NEW YORK (JTA) — The story of America’s oldest synagogue, as told by retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, is the story of American Jewish history. Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, Souter wrote, was built in the 1700s by Sephardic merchants whose community then declined. In the late 1800s, Eastern European Jews arrived in…
Before World War II, according to a German news site, there were about 2,800 synagogues in Germany. Now there are around 130. It’s a grim statistic, but there is cause for optimism. Since reunification Germans have a renewed interest in the Jewish history of their country. They’ve also welcomed an influx of Jews, mainly from…
Jewish Communal Prayer: to what might we compare it? To a symphony performance….Are we spectators in the music hall, or players in the orchestra? To what might we compare it? To a dramatic play….Are we spectators in the theater, or players on the stage? To what might we compare it? To a team sporting event….Are…
(REUTERS) — A U.S. judge on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to withhold federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities, dealing another legal blow to the administration’s immigration priorities. The ruling from U.S. District Judge William Orrick III in San Francisco said Trump’s order targeted broad categories of federal funding for sanctuary…
The sanctuary of the Great Synagogue in Lodz was probably not, in actuality, sour-apple green. Yet in a late 19th- or early 20th-century postcard showcasing the synagogue’s interior, colorized with an outré enthusiasm, a chandelier and sections of the bimah are the color of a doctor’s-office lollipop. That candy-tinted symbol of times past might, when…
(JTA) — The Reform movement called on its member synagogues to protected undocumented immigrants facing deportation from the United States. The Union for Reform Judaism issued a resolution Friday recommending that its congregations provide shelter and legal assistance, as well as material, financial or educational support to at-risk immigrants. Rabbi Dov Pesner, who heads the movement’s policy arm, the…
BOSTON (JTA) — Ownership of the country’s oldest synagogue and its valuable religious and ritual objects is being decided by a federal appeals court. The hearing of the case by a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston is the latest development in a closely watched legal battle pitting New…
“An unjust law is not a law,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from his Birmingham, Alabama, jail cell. The letter is well known – less so the fact that King was writing to fellow church leaders who disapproved of his breaking the law in the name of civil rights. I was saddened to…
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