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Jewish Journal • 8th August 2024

Explorers makes retirement a time for exuberant living for North Shore seniors - Jewish Journal

Gay Porter doesn’t believe that aging means life must get dark, dull or lonely.
“The retirement years can be everything you might not be able to do during your working years,” she says. “It’s full of joy and color and new things – new people and new ideas and new subjects. I think that’s mostly what lifelong learning is about: you are never too old to learn!”
For five years now, Porter, 81, has been president of the Explorers Lifelong Learning Institute at Salem State University, a program that...

Jewish Journal • 8th August 2024

99-year-old survivor to perform in Andover with Holocaust Survivor Band - Jewish Journal

Saul Dreier first beat out a rhythm in a Nazi concentration camp. He wanted to help out a cantor friend of his, also imprisoned, with making music in the camps, but he was not a singer. He figured he could offer a beat.
Through another friend in the camp, Dreier was able to acquire two spoons (most people only got one). One night, as the cantor sat singing with other prisoners, Dreier started up a beat. “I felt that something was missing, so I took the two spoons, joined them, and started ‘pom,...

Jewish Journal • 25th July 2024

How an unstoppable Black Jewish woman from Brookline became a voice for Israel - Jewish Journal

In a Tel Aviv mall sometime in 2017, Noa Fay saw a Black girl at the register, and a thought struck her: That person is probably Jewish.
That thought mattered because Fay herself is Black and Jewish. Growing up in Brookline’s Coolidge Corner, she knew she stood out from her white Jewish peers. Even in an explicitly Jewish space like synagogue, strangers never assumed she was Jewish like they did her white friends. Once at a shul event in Lexington, a woman tried to explain to her what a rabbi wa...

Jewish Journal • 18th April 2024

Mass. teachers accuse labor union of promoting antisemitism during webinar - Jewish Journal

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, the umbrella labor union for public school educators, has come under fire in recent weeks after a webinar titled “The Struggle Against Anti-Palestinian Racism” triggered an already-growing movement of Jewish teachers in the state to warn of antisemitism.
The MTA’s Anti-Racism Task Force has scheduled webinars intended to “deepen our understanding of racial injustice and liberation from an intersectional lens, and inspire action,” according to its website....

Jewish Journal • 15th February 2024

Wayland temple carries out mission to go green

Sometime in 2020, a whole lot of people began to care about air quality.

The pandemic brought about a renaissance for puzzles and sourdough, but it also made “HVAC” a colloquialism – suddenly the efficiency and quality of our air filtration systems became a serious concern to many who had never considered such a thing before.

Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland was one such group with these concerns. But what started as a need to address issues around indoor air quality and comfort ended with a radic

Jewish Journal • 1st February 2024

‘The Einstein Effect’ reveals the humanitarian side of the genius

Somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia, there lives a rooster named Albert Einstein.

There’s also a chicken – Alberta. Both are Polish chickens, possessing a remarkable likeness to their namesake via a shock of white feathers on their heads.

The chickens’ namer and owner is Benyamin Cohen, who, in addition to being a chicken farmer with his wife Elizabeth, is the news director of the Forward, the man behind Albert Einstein’s very active social media presence, and the author of a recent bo

Jewish Journal • 1st February 2024

These Hebrew schools have become joyful places where kids learn community

Sylvie Gordan and Noa Lewis are friends from temple. Sylvie, 10, lives in Beverly, and Noa, 11, in Gloucester, but on Tuesdays and Sundays, they find themselves in the same space at the Sylvia Cohen Family Learning Project at Temple Ahavat Achim in Gloucester.

On Tuesdays, it’s close to a 40-minute drive from the public school that Sylvie attends in Beverly, but it’s the only place that she gets to be with other Jews during the week. She knows only a couple of Jewish students at her school, and

Jewish Journal • 17th January 2024

Tensions remain high at Harvard after Gay’s departure

Claudine Gay has resigned as president of Harvard University, but the tumult of her departure has only just begun.

The news came during increasingly publicized and heated allegations of plagiarism in Gay’s scholarly work, nearly a month after the former president’s tepid responses in the Congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses, and after Harvard’s board assured the world she would remain in office. She is the second to resign of the three presidents who testified before Congre

Jewish Telegraphic Agency • 4th January 2024

To welcome interfaith couples, this Conservative synagogue hired a cantor who's allowed to wed them

(Jewish Journal of Greater Boston via JTA) — Sarah Freudenberger has spent a lot of time being told “no.”

A year and a half out of college, the “no” came from cantorial schools when she applied for ordination. Months later, when she got engaged, it came from the three rabbis she had worked with at a Reform synagogue in Florida, when she asked if they would officiate her wedding.

Both refusals were because – like 42% of married American Jews, according to a 2020 Pew study – Freudenberger’s spou

Jewish Journal • 7th December 2023

Bnei mitzvah group celebrates deeper connection to faith

NEWBURYPORT – Wendy Leavitt didn’t read Torah at her bat mitzvah. It wasn’t common when she was bat mitzvahed in the ’70s – bat mitzvahs in her shul (for girls), unlike bar mitzvahs (for boys), generally happened on Friday nights, not on Saturdays when the Torah is read. It bothered her for decades.

“I didn’t know there was anything to do about it,” says Leavitt, now 60. For a while, there was nothing to be done: Leavitt felt a little on the outside of the Jewish community, and bothered by this

Jewish Journal • 24th November 2023

Brandeis continues to grapple with fallout from censoring pro-Palestinian group

Seven people – including three students – were arrested on Brandeis University’s Waltham campus on Nov. 10 in relation to a protest against the university’s decision to derecognize the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Six of the seven were arrested during the police-enforced dispersion of the protest, and the seventh was arrested earlier in the afternoon for trespassing. All seven pleaded not guilty in court on Nov. 13 to charges including disorderly conduct, unlawful

Jewish Journal • 24th November 2023

From Israel to Jewish day schools

In the middle of the night on Oct. 7, Rebecca, a grandmother who lives in Swampscott, got a call from her daughter in Israel.

“Something is very wrong,” her daughter said.

Rebecca, who requested her last name not be used for security concerns, was born, raised in and spent much of her life in Israel before moving to the United States 20 years ago. She has lived through war in her home country, and she recognized the signs of Oct. 7. What she saw – as confusing and chaotic as the news was at th

Jewish Journal • 9th November 2023

Jews who support Palestinian sovereignty caught in crossfire of Hamas attack

We’ll call her Sarah – like many right now, this Harvard graduate student requested anonymity, fearing repercussions if she publicly shared her views on Israel. What’s different about Sarah is that she fears backlash from both ends of the current political spectrum: a progressive left that has largely condoned the acts of Hamas on Oct. 7, and a Jewish right that has largely supported Israel’s response since then.

Sarah believes neither are right. “I think of myself as pro a two-state solution,”

Jewish Journal • 26th October 2023

War of words breaks out on college campuses in response to Hamas attack

About 500 Harvard protestors walked out of class on Oct. 19 in support of Palestinians at an event organized by the Palestinian Solidarity Committee (PSC) and Graduate Students 4 Palestine, according to the Harvard Crimson. This followed a “die-in” the day before, staged by the same groups, who also organized another march on Harvard’s campus on Oct. 20.

“Seeing people marching through the yard is definitely scary,” said Charlie Covit, a first-year Jewish student at Harvard. “I have no problem

Jewish Journal • 7th September 2023

Not in grief, but in community: Ahavas Achim holds powerful genizah burial

On a beautiful Sunday morning in August, Rabbi Alex Matthews stood over a freshly dug grave full of books.

The Amesbury-based rabbi had presided over a dozen-plus funerals before then, but this one was different. He was not wearing a suit. He was not grieving. And, of course, there was no body in the grave before him. No, Matthews was not there to hold a funeral; he was there to bury genizah items.

“Genizah literally means a ‘hidden place,’ ” said Matthews. He’s been the spiritual leader of Co

Jewish Journal • 27th July 2023

Women learn their Jewish heritage at Shirat Hayam’s pop-up Mishnah gathering

SALEM – Faith Kramer opened the door – the front of which was adorned in big, colorful letters spelling her name – clad from head to toe in bright turquoise, white hair curling at her ears, and said, enthusiastically, “Welcome to my house!”

The greeting was clearly a courtesy because few, if any, introductions were needed among Kramer and the women who crowded into her Salem home. Most had been there before, and they skipped over apparently unnecessary pleasantries, launching into discussions o

Jewish Journal • 27th July 2023

Novoselsky makes it his mission to find yahrzeit plaques’ families from former Revere shul

Two hundred yahrzeit plaques, originally from the former Congregation Tifereth Israel in Revere, have been stored in the Veterans’ Home in Chelsea’s Jewish Chapel for nearly five years. Now, the veterans’ home is undergoing renovations, and the plaques need a place to go, ideally – in Novoselsky’s eyes – to the families of those named on them.

Founded in 1912 by Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, Congregation Tifereth Israel closed in 2015, a result of a thinning Jewish population as fa

Jewish Journal • 13th July 2023

Brandeis president apologizes after national ad campaign angers the school’s Orthodox community

The president of Brandeis University has apologized for a recent ad in The New York Times Magazine, that took aim at the school’s connection to Orthodox Judaism. The university came under fire for declaring in the title of the June 25 ad that Brandeis was “anything but Orthodox.” The ad angered observant students and Brandeis graduates, and brought international attention to the Waltham university.

The two-page spread appeared in The New York Times Magazine titled “Brandeis was founded by Jews.

Jewish Journal • 18th May 2023

Grandma’s Jewish recipes inspire Lynn chef’s rise to the top

A Jewish chef in Lynn has been shortlisted for the James Beard Foundation 2023 Outstanding Chef award.

Rachel Miller, executive chef of Nightshade Noodle Bar and owner of the neighboring Sin City Superette, has come a long way from working 80-hour weeks at a doughnut shop and a burger joint.

“All I’ve ever wanted is to be a semifinalist one day – in, like, a regional category,” she said. “Now being a finalist in the top five in the country? That’s insane! I’m over the moon.”

Seven years ago,

Women's eNews • 13th January 2022

Climate Feminism: Where Compassion and Justice Meet

Senator Joe Manchin made his name as a climate justice villain. It’s the campaign message he ran on in 2010, defying President Obama’s climate legislation, and it’s the reason he has taken up so much space in our news feeds lately— Manchin has made it his mission to shut down attempts at environmental reforms aimed to mend the climate crisis.

He’s an easy bad guy to hate. Manchin embodies the conservative climate denier that so many of us have come to see on the oppositional side of the climate

Women's eNews • 4th November 2021

Saying Goodbye to Safety: All-Female Mills College Turns Co-ed

When Kate Valente packed for college, she did not pack pepper spray. Although the lists she consulted online for female college students always included pepper spray or mace for walking around campus alone, she said to herself, “That was not something I was worried about… I feel safe here.”

“Here” is the historically all-women’s Mills College in Oakland, California. Since its founding in 1852, Mills has prided itself as a pioneer for all-women’s higher education, and has attracted women seeking

10th August 2021

When Sustainability Isn't Sustained: The Challenge of Environmental Activism in College

The Challenge of Environmental Activism in College

In the fall of 2014, Jay Feinstein was a Brandeis University sophomore taking a class called “Greening the Ivory Tower.” Professor Laura Goldin had been teaching the course for a decade and a half, having designed it to inspire students to create what she called an “environmental ethic.” Each semester, her students conceived and implemented an array of sustainability projects to solve environmental problems they saw on campus.

The class was re

Ms. Magazine • 8th September 2020

Film "I Am Woman" Tells The Story Behind Helen Reddy's Feminist Anthem

In December of 1972, Helen Reddy’s song, I Am Woman, hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Perhaps more significantly—for the Ms. perspective—is that it also became the anthem of the women’s liberation movement.

Now, over 50 years later, we finally get to hear the inspiring story of the woman behind it.

I Am Woman—a new feature film by Australian director Unjoo Moon, premiering in the U.S. on demand and in theaters on September 11—is the first biopic about the Australian musical icon who so p

Ms. Magazine • 19th August 2020

We Heart: Stitching it to the Patriarchy, One Shirt at A Time

In June of 2019, Nina Harris, a then-rising senior at Tulane University, had an idea to up-cycle thrifted shirts.

She had been a fan of thrifting for a while. Like many before her, Harris grew up shopping at Forever 21 but converted to “thriftdom” after learning about the horrors of fast fashion—from its mistreatment of workers to staggering environmental costs.

In high school, she bought a shirt at a thrift store printed the words “You are sexy.” The shirt always received lots of compliments