More in ‘Reform’

• The Swiss government denied the U.S. extradition request for filmmaker Roman Polanski, who survived the Krakow ghetto. Switzerland blamed its lack of access to confidential testimony related to his sentencing for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. [LAT/AP]
• The U.S. and Israeli Reform and Conservative movements are furious at today’s vote on a bill ...

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 ...

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.