Posts Tagged: RABBI AVI WEISS
New Sharansky Book Discloses Strains Between Netanyahu, US Jews
“Liberal American Jews really don’t like Israel,” a frustrated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told then-Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky in 2015, according to an account...
Reflections on the Death of a Parent
A very good friend of mine recently lost his father. Naturally, this brought back thoughts of when my mother, Penny Waga, died in 2013. It also reminded...
Telling Our Children the Story of Russian Jewry
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Shalom, the oldest Orthodox synagogue in Washington, DC, has written a touching and powerful new children’s book, An Extra Seat. This easy-to-read picture...
EXCLUSIVE: Prominent American Rabbi Calls On Pope Francis to Remove Catholic Church From World’s ‘Largest Jewish Cemetery’ in Auschwitz-Birkenau
A prominent American rabbi is urging the Pope to remove a Catholic church from the site of the “largest Jewish cemetery in the world,” The Algemeiner has learned....
Kol Nidre and the White Fire of the Iran-Deal Discourse
JNS.org - The High Holidays are here, reaching their crescendo with Yom Kippur’s Kol Nidre prayer, made famous by Al Jolson and Neil Diamond in “The Jazz...
Kaddish for the Victims of Charleston
My father died a few weeks ago. The hardest part of the shiva (mourning period) was when it ended. Friends and family were, by and...
Memoirs of a Soviet Jewish Activist (REVIEW)
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the mass immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union to Israel. To commemorate the anniversary, longtime activist Rabbi Avi...
You Are Not Alone: Our Solidarity Mission to Paris
"A fire is burning," Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky declared to European Jewry during the 1930s. Too few heeded his cry. As I left Paris after a solidarity...
Where Are the Jewish Liberals Marching For Decency?
A few weeks ago, I wrote an op-ed in The New York Observer entitled "B'nai Jeshurun: Do Jewish Lives Also Matter?" I noted that "high-profile Upper West Side...
An Amazing Movie: ‘Righteous Rebel: Rabbi Avi Weiss’
A packed house attended the screening of "Righteous Rebel: Rabbi Avi Weiss" on Saturday night at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. It was a touching, beautiful movie that...
Lessons to Learn From Rabbi Barry Freundel
The arrest of Rabbi Barry Freundel, spiritual leader of the Kesher Israel congregation in Washington, DC, is an event which should prompt soul-searching in the Orthodox Jewish...
Ban Orthodox Rabbinic Pedophiles – Not Rabbi Avi Weiss
There's an ongoing debate within the Jewish Modern Orthodox community about where its parameters lie. The most recent flare-up occurred after the Israeli Chief Rabbinate...
RCA Says it Has Reached ‘Historic’ Deal With Israeli Rabbinate
JNS.org - The Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) announced that it has reached a "historic" deal with the Israeli Rabbinate on determining the "Jewishness"...
Put an End to the Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s Monopoly
It's painful to have one's rabbinic credentials challenged by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. But that's exactly what's happened to me. In truth, it's much more...