Articles written by uriel heilman
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Annual G.A.-how close are its goals?
NEW YORK (JTA)-Jerry Silverman recently started his second five-year term as the CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America-the first time that any chief of the federation umbrella organization...
Focusing on ISIS in U.N. speech, Obama virtually ignores Iran
NEW YORK (JTA) – President Obama devoted the bulk of his U.N. speech to the fight against violent Islamic extremism and hardly mentioned Iran's nuclear program. In his address last year to the General...
At 2014 U.N. General Assembly, ISIS likely to dominate discourse
NEW YORK (JTA)-The circus is coming to town. No, there won't be marching elephants, lion tamers or motorcycles jumping through rings of fire. But there may be wolves in sheep's clothing, tightrope...
Why the U.S. and Israel are not getting along
(JTA) – All is not well in the U.S.-Israel relationship. Somehow, the 50 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas frayed ties between Washington and Jerusalem. How did this happen? In part, the c...
Finding the Goldbergs: A Catskills mystery unraveled
MONTICELLO, N.Y. (JTA)-The moment I kicked in the door of the abandoned house in the heart of the Catskills, I felt like I was in an episode of "The Twilight Zone: Borscht Belt edition." In some corne...
Tunnel vision: Why Hamas' tunnels are the new front in the war with Israel
(JTA)-Until this latest war, if you asked most Israelis about the threat from Gaza, they would probably start talking about Hamas rockets. But that has changed over the last few days of fighting, for...
Eight things you need to know about the Gaza-Israel conflict
(JTA)- Israel and Hamas are fighting their third major conflict in six years, and while some things have stayed the same, the battle lines have also shifted in a few notable ways. Here are eight...
Twenty years after rebbe's death, has Chabad changed?
NEW YORK (JTA) - What does a fervent religious movement do after the death of its singular leader? That was the existential question the Chabad-Lubavitch movement faced 20 years ago this week when...
American Jews take up cause of missing Israeli teens
NEW YORK (JTA) – The Reform movement posted a prayer. Chabad asked followers to pledge to do a mitzvah. The Jewish Federations of North America set up a Web page to express solidarity. The d...
Considering future, Claims Conference weighs shutting down vs. Holocaust education
NEW YORK (JTA) - A special panel tasked with examining the governance and strategic vision of the Claims Conference is recommending that the organization shift its long-term focus to Holocaust...
Where Chabad's lost boys go to find themselves
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (JTA)-The Bais Menachem Youth Development program in this northeastern Pennsylvania city is no typical Chabad yeshiva. The students wear flip-flops and T-shirts, not the typical...
ADL survey: More than a quarter of the world hates Jews
NEW YORK (JTA)-A lot of people around the world hate the Jews. That's the main finding of the Anti-Defamation League's largest-ever worldwide survey of anti-Semitic attitudes. The survey, released...
The quest to find America's top mohels
NEW YORK (JTA) — Who knew? It turns out that mohels not only have one of the most peculiar professions in the Jewish world, but they’re funny, eccentric and self-promotional in odd ways, too. Circumcision activists pro and con can debate the eff...
At Wrigley Field, Orthodox vendors going the way of Cubs wins
(JTA)-Longtime fans of the Chicago Cubs know there are a few mainstays they can expect when they visit Wrigley Field: ivy on the outfield walls, a strict no-wave policy rigorously enforced by fans...
Holocaust restitution moves slowly in Eastern Europe
NEW YORK (JTA)—When a 2009 Holocaust-era assets conference concluded with a landmark statement of principles on Holocaust restitution, many restitution advocates had high hopes that a corner had been turned in the struggle for survivor justice. T...
Southern supermarket giant Winn-Dixie bets big on kosher
BOCA RATON, Fla. (JTA)-Stroll past the kosher section of most large supermarkets in America and you could be forgiven for thinking that Jewish diets consist mainly of jarred gefilte fish, unsalted...
With Venezuela in a tailspin, Jews opting for 'Plan B'
(JTA)- They left after Venezuelan secret police raided a Jewish club in 2007, and after the local synagogue was ransacked by unidentified thugs two years later. They left after President Hugo Chavez e...
Hosting Israel critics? Jewish institutions damned if they do, damned if they don't
NEW YORK (JTA)-Just how open should Jewish institutions be when it comes to talking about Israel? That's the question at the center of a flurry of controversies over the last few days involving...
Devorah Halberstam's path from bereaved mother to counterterrorism authority
NEW YORK (JTA) – When a 16-year-old Lubavitcher named Ari Halberstam was gunned down on the Brooklyn Bridge on March 1, 1994 by a Lebanese livery cab driver, the killing seemed to be a c...
Florida: It's not just for old Jews anymore
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (JTA)-At the Urban Rustic Cafe in a strip mall in this city located between Miami to the south and the Palm Beach retirement communities to the north, the line for a table stretches...
Sharon's unfinished business
NEW YORK (JTA)—When I first heard about Ariel Sharon’s stroke—the first one, a minor brain attack about four weeks before he suffered the massive hemorrhage that would leave him comatose for the final eight years of his life—I was having dinner...
Is food writer Mark Bittman going kosher?
NEW YORK (JTA)-Mark Bittman is not a religious man by any stretch of the imagination, least of all his own. A longtime food writer for The New York Times who three years ago shifted from cooking to...
Reform Judaism tries for a 'reboot' in face of daunting challenges
SAN DIEGO (JTA)-What do you get when you bring together 5,000 of the Reform movement's faithful for a conference in sunny San Diego in mid-December? Four days of singing, learning, schmoozing and...
Conservative synagogues wrestle with non-Jews in the pews
NEW YORK (JTA)-To an outsider, the battles might seem to be over trifles-in some cases, just a few feet. Where may a non-Jewish parent stand in the synagogue during his child's bar mitzvah? Can a...
With vacant space, Conservative and Reform temples turn to Orthodox
(JTA)- Marla Topp of Temple Judea Mizpah in Skokie, Ill., doesn't need survey data to tell her that Reform Judaism is in decline and Orthodox Judaism is growing. She has to look no further than her...
