More in ‘Orthodox’

At least 1,500 ultra-Orthodox Jews stormed an Intel plant in Jerusalem on Saturday, angry that the computer chip-maker is operating there on the Sabbath. The rioters, some of whom wore shtreimels and other holiday finery, threw rocks at onlookers and journalists and ransacked part of the factory, including its chapel. According to the Jerusalem Post, ...

An Israeli sociologist has published a study based on surveys he conducted with more than 700 kids at Jewish summer camps across the United States. Campers were presented with a list of 132 symbols—a range incluiding a talis, the Talmud, a Star of David, the Holocaust, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen—and asked how much each one ...

• In advance of Thursday’s National Jewish Leadership Advocacy Day on Iran in Washington, D.C., major organizations affiliated with the Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, and Orthodox movements together called on American Jews to highlight the urgency of the Iranian nuclear question. [JTA]
• Even though the government he serves in just approved the construction of over 450 ...

• A Modern Orthodox synagogue in New Orleans lost its home in Hurricane Katrina; since then, it has developed a partnership with a local Reform congregation, and will be constructing a new building on their land. Says one official, this unusual camaraderie is indicative of the “rosy future” for New Orleans’ Jews. [JTA]
• Via a ...

• Perhaps angling for another round of Orthodox protests, the Israeli Antiquities Authority plans to excavate a grave that may contain the remains of a revered third-century rabbi. [JPost]
• An Orthodox rabbi who won’t perform gay marriages but who opposes California’s Proposition 8 was moved by the film Milk to “Thank God we have a ...

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by secular parents in Lawrence, New York, one of Long Island’s Five Towns, which claimed that their Orthodox-dominated school board had decided to close the district’s nicest elementary school in hopes of selling or leasing it to a yeshiva. (Six of the seven elected school board members ...

For a very long time, discussions of the future of American Judaism have taken place in an atmosphere of pessimism and recrimination. Since the 1960s, the familiar story goes, Jewish religious institutions have allowed the majority of Jews to slip away. Synagogues are spiritually uninspiring places, which most Jews visit only on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Reform and Conservative movements are in an identity crisis, unable to come up with convincing theological rationales for their existence. Israel and the Holocaust have become the real pillars of American Jewish identity, and they are growing less potent all the time.

A Jewish newspaper in Houston interviewed two rabbis—Samuel Karff, who’s Reform, and Yossi Grossman, who works for an Orthodox-affiliated organization—for the first article in a four-part series about Jewish perspectives on health care reform. While both rabbis drew their interpretations from the Torah and Talmud, Karff came to the more politically liberal conclusion, arguing that ...

• A conference for Orthodox feminists in Israel addressed some hot topics, including women rabbis and family planning. But it wasn’t quite up to the Jerusalem Post’s standards: “women came with infants slung across their stomachs or strapped into strollers, which immediately raised the question: Where is dad? Answer: Infant-free at work. Not exactly radical ...

The British Court of Appeal ruled late last month that Jewish schools must admit students based on faith, not birth or conversion. Citing the Race Relations Act of 1976, the three judges overruled a prior judgment that upheld the right of Jews’ Free School, the oldest and largest Jewish day school in Britain, to reject ...