Articles written by Ben Sales
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Hope fading and regulations tightening, more Jewish camps set to cancel
(JTA)—At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, and as recently as a couple weeks ago, some Jewish camps had hoped they could run for part of the summer. For a growing number of camps, that hope now appears to be vanishing. Two Conservative Ramah...
Ramah camps anticipate a total budget shortfall of $27 million this year, but don't expect to fold
(JTA)—The network of 10 Conservative Jewish Ramah camps in North America will lose approximately half of their collective annual revenue if they all need to cancel camp and refund tuition—a total...
Conservative Jewish youth group USY cancels summer travel programs
(JTA)—The Conservative Jewish youth group United Synagogue Youth is canceling its summer travel programs for teens, the latest in a string of canceled Jewish summer programs. The announcement comes as several Conservative Ramah summer camps are...
It's official: Most Reform Jewish camps will cancel this summer
(JTA)-Nearly all Reform Jewish summer camps, and at least one Conservative camp, will remain closed for the 2020 summer due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has...
From cabins to bungalows: Some Jewish overnight camps may become socially distanced family retreats this summer
(JTA)-Every summer, JCC Ranch Camp in Colorado gives hundreds of kids an outdoorsy Jewish experience. There's hiking, mountain biking, ropes courses and horseback riding, along with the traditional...
Jewish nonprofits are struggling-how can donors help?
By Ben Sales NEW YORK (JTA)—In the weeks after it became clear that the coronavirus pandemic would spark a lasting economic crisis, the Jewish world’s leading funder group put together a memo with some back-of-the-envelope projections for how muc...
Passover in a pandemic: Families on Zoom, solo seders and broken traditions
(JTA)-Rena Munster was looking forward to hosting a Passover seder for the first time. In past years, her parents or another relative hosted the meal. But this year she had invited her parents,...
'Painful and deep': Jewish nonprofits face dire economic prospects during and after coronavirus
NEW YORK (JTA)—Some 38,000 people work at Jewish community centers across North America, staffing preschools, camps, gyms, classes, activities for seniors and more. Because of the coronavirus crisis, a lot of them are going to lose their jobs....
Syrian Muslim donated a tree in Israel for an Italian boy
(JTA)—Aboud Dandachi isn’t Jewish. Or Israeli. Or Italian. Or sick with coronavirus. He’s a Muslim from Syria living in Canada. But when he read the Jewish Telegraphic Agency story about an Italian boy whose bar mitzvah was curtailed because...
Jersey City's kosher supermarket is starting to reopen
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (JTA)-Two months after his wife was murdered in the attack on this city's only kosher grocery store, owner Moshe Ferencz was back behind the counter this week. The store, which has...
More than 50 JCCs nationwide receive emailed bomb threats
This is a developing story. NEW YORK (JTA)—More than 50 Jewish community centers in 23 states have received emailed bomb threats since Saturday. None of the threats have been found to be credible, though local law enforcement agencies have been not...
White supremacists distributed more propaganda in 2019 but held fewer events, ADL says
(JTA)—One flyer reads “Holocaust = fake news.” Another says “America is not for sale.” And another: “Diversity destroys nations.” These are just a few of the 2,713 pieces of propaganda distributed in the United States by white...
A.G. Barr meets with Jewish leaders
NEW YORK (JTA)—In a meeting Tuesday with Orthodox Jewish leaders in Brooklyn, U.S. Attorney General William Barr pledged to track and prosecute hate crimes more aggressively on the federal level while also blaming the rise of anti-Semitism on what...
Survey: most American adults don't know 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust
(JTA)—Half of American adults are unaware of basic facts regarding Nazism and the Holocaust, including the number of Jews who were killed and how Nazis came to power. Those are some of the findings of a new study by the Pew Research Center released...
NAACP suspends official
NEW YORK (JTA)-A local NAACP official in New Jersey has been suspended from his position for six months after giving a speech castigating Orthodox Jews in Jersey City and the largely Jewish city of...
More than 25,000 march against anti-Semitism in New York City
NEW YORK (JTA)-An estimated 25,000 people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and held a rally on Sunday to protest rising anti-Semitism in and around New York City. The rally comes following a spate o...
Monsey rabbi who survived stabbing attack gives invocation at New York State of the State address
NEW YORK (JTA)-Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg, whose home was the site of a stabbing last month on the holiday of Chanukah, delivered an invocation at Governor Andrew Cuomo's State of the State address....
Netanyahu easily wins Likud primary
(JTA)-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has won his party's leadership primary with 72.5 percent of the vote. Challenger Gideon Saar got 27.5 percent, according to Haaretz. Turnout for the...
Inside the biggest American Shabbat service of the year
CHICAGO (JTA)-Josh Nelson sat onstage in front of 5,000 people, accompanied by eight other musicians and perched next to a ginormous video screen bearing the words to one of Judaism's central...
Everything you need to know about Israeli settlements and the Trump administration's announcement
(JTA)-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced this week that the United States will no longer consider Israeli Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria to be illegal. Here's an explainer about what th...
Ukraine asked Alexander Vindman to be its defense minister, and other takeaways from his impeachment testimony
This is a developing story. (JTA)—Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the Jewish National Security Council staffer whose firsthand account of the July phone call between President Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine is at the center of the...
Jewish man stabbed repeatedly outside New York synagogue
This is a developing story. NEW YORK (JTA)—An Orthodox man was stabbed multiple times on his walk to synagogue for morning prayers. The man was approaching the synagogue Toshnad Heichel Torah Utfila in Spring Valley, New York, when a man got out...
These Manhattan synagogues want to become condominiums
NEW YORK (JTA)-One of the most active times of day at the West Side Jewish Center begins precisely at 1:40 p.m., when 60 or so middle-aged men trudge in, mutter through the afternoon prayer service...
Anti-Semitism is spiking in Brooklyn, and officials don't know why
NEW YORK (JTA)-Days after a series of attacks against Jews across Brooklyn, the Anti-Defamation League announced that it would double funding for a school program combating hate. But city officials...
Student walks out on survivor's speech after accusing Israel of 'ethnic cleansing'
(JTA)—A Palestinian student at Benedictine University called on a Holocaust survivor to condemn the establishment of Israel, and then walked out on his speech after he did not do so. Following a speech last week by Professor Harold Kasimow, who...
