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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 • 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 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 • 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 • 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

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

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 • 15th July 2020

The Lost Season: COVID-19’s Impact on Underrepresented Playwrights

When Donnetta Lavinia Grays was an undergraduate at the College of Charleston, she was cast in a production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Grays, a queer Black woman from Columbia, S.C., was not cast as Juliet, nor Romeo, despite obvious talent and extensive acting experience across genders. She was cast as Juliet’s nurse—not a small role in the play, but not a true lead, either.

But no matter—she was new in college and didn’t think much of the director’s choice. It was not until after the show was ove

Ms. Magazine • 1st July 2020

Tools of the Patriarchy: The Weaponization of Hair

Tools of the Patriarchy is a biweekly column on the tools that establish men’s dominance in society, or, in other words, uphold the patriarchy. Whether or not these tools are used intentionally, they contribute to a world in which women are not equal to men.

From abortion to weight loss, the patriarchal tradition of policing women’s bodies is a strong and long lasting one. Telling women what they must or must not do with their hair—whether that be the color, texture, quantity or location of it—

Ms. Magazine • 12th June 2020

100 Years of Women Voting Means Defending the Right to Vote for All

100 years ago, on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was officially added to the Constitution. On that day, women’s constitutional right to vote was recognized and the United States moved one step closer to equality and enfranchisement for all. Following decades of fighting for all varieties of progressive change, this, the ultimate triumph of the women’s suffrage movement, finally prevailed.

Today, many are still robbed of the right women so fiercely fought for.

Voter suppression and voting