News

New Jersey Jewish News (5/4/18)
Naomi Ackerman has been performing her one-woman show about domestic violence for more than two decades. Unfortunately, she said, she doesn’t see an end in sight. “Sadly, it is still relevant,” she told NJJN in a telephone interview from her home in Los Angeles. “A lot has changed, and nothing has changed.

JTA (5/5/18)
Rabbi Aaron Panken, the president of Hebrew Union College, was killed piloting a small aircraft in the Hudson Valley area of New York state. MidHudson News reported that the plane crashed in a wooded area in the Town of Wawayanda, near the New Jersey border Saturday.

ejewish Philanthropy (4/26/18)
Twenty Jewish-American children’s book authors walk into an Israeli bar. It’s not the beginning of a joke, but rather a life-changing experience for many of us. OK, two of us aren’t Jewish. And two are Canadian. And it was more of an organic farm slash kibbutz slash restaurant slash bar.

New Jersey Jewish News (4/25/18)
The program consists of two speakers who are eyewitnesses to the Holocaust and a moderator. The speakers are chosen for the diversity of their stories during the era to help develop awareness that the Holocaust encompassed a wide range of experiences.

Jewish Link of New Jersey (4/26/18)
Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut were celebrated last week in Essex County and lauded as making a concrete link in the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel. For the fifth year, the Orthodox shuls in Livingston, Springfield and West Orange congregated for a Yom Hazikaron observance.

Jewish Link of New Jersey (4/19/18)
The Wilkins Theater at Kean University has graciously become home to the annual Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest Holocaust remembrance event. Kean boasts the oldest formal Holocaust studies program in the country, dating back to 1986, according to University President Dr. Dawood Farahi.

New Jersey Jewish News (4/4/18)
Rena Abrams of South Orange, who serves as Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ’s Young Leadership Division director, has been named a Next Gen Jewish Federation Fellow. The 18-month program offers participants tools and training to grow professional leadership skills and connect more deeply to Judaism.

New Jersey Jewish News (4/4/18)
Rabbi Elliot Goldberg has been appointed the new Upper School principal at Golda Och Academy (GOA) in West Orange. He will begin July 1. Goldberg comes to GOA with more than 20 years of experience in Jewish day schools.

JTA (4/9/18)
A bipartisan slate of House members is set to introduce a bill that would grant money to Holocaust education in schools. The Never Again Education Act would establish the Holocaust Education Assistance Program Fund in the U.S. Treasury. A 12-member board would disburse the money to schools.

New Jersey Jewish News (3/28/18)
Social Venture Fund for Jewish-Arab Equality and Shared Society (SVF) was awarded on March 13 the 2018 Shapiro Prize for Excellence in Philanthropic Collaboration by the Jewish Funders Network (JFN) at its annual conference in Tel Aviv. The Social Venture Fund is a collaborative and structured partnership of more than 20 funders from the United States and Israel, including Global Connections of Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ.

New Jersey Jewish News (3/21/18)
Some eight months ago, Gary Levenston, a 46-year-old psychologist in Boca Raton, Fla., received a genealogy report from ancestry.com. It triggered an interest in his Newark roots and the lives of his great-grandparents, who arrived there at the turn of the 20th century.

Jewish Link NJ (3/15/18)
How does one live in a city that experiences everything from terrorist attacks to demonstrations against compulsory military service, from labor walkouts to illegal immigrant protests? That is what Jerusalemites often deal with on a daily basis. How are their daily lives affected? What keeps them in Jerusalem?

New Jersey Jewish News (3/7/18)
As the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was unfolding, Steven Karp, executive director of the Jewish Educational Center (JEC) in Elizabeth, called security expert Robert Wilson. “Part of the concept over here is: I’m no expert in security, but he is,” said Karp.

New Jersey Jewish News (2/28/18)
Harris T. Jaffe spent two-and-a-half hours hiding in a closet during the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., wondering if the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, 19, would find him. On Sunday, the 16-year-old was behind a podium at Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston, calling for legislative action and telling more than 2,300 people his story of survival in a massacre that left 17 of his classmates and teachers dead.

NJ.com (2/25/18)
They've taken buses to their state capitol, flights to meet with the president and now they've come to New Jersey. Student survivors of the mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school brought their message of gun control to the Temple B'nai Abraham in Livingston on Sunday.

4New York (2/25/18)
Three survivors of the school shooting in Florida joined a rally in New Jersey on Sunday with Sen. Bob Menendez to push for "common sense gun legislation."

Hudsonreporter.com (1/21/18)
North Bergen sixth, seventh, and eighth graders learned about the Holocaust from two survivors who spoke at the John F. Kennedy School Jan. 12. The two survivors visited as part of the Jewish Federation of Greater Metrowest New Jersey, the largest Jewish philanthropy group in the state. New Jersey currently mandates Holocaust education for kids in grades K through 12.

New Jersey Jewish News (1/24/18)
On Dec. 26, 1947, a blizzard left a paralyzing 27 inches of snow on the ground in New Jersey. For Noah Chivian, that meant major complications for his bar mitzvah service scheduled for Shabbat the next day at Oheb Shalom Congregation in Newark.

New Jersey Jewish News (1/24/18)
If Bea Slater had ever been a shrinking violet, her sudden celebrity might be uncomfortable. At 90, the great-grandmother has her image plastered on billboards up and down Manhattan and in Brooklyn. There’s even one on the roof above Junior’s, the famous cheesecake place.

jewishlinknj.com (1/18/18)
“The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures From the Nazis”, written by David E. Fishman, is an account of a group of Vilna Ghetto resisters, melding history with the very human stories of some who participated in the watershed event. On February 1 at 7 p.m., Professor Fishman will be the keynote speaker at the opening reception of the Holocaust Council of Greater MetroWest’s signature exhibition, “From Memory to History.”

New Jersey Jewish News (1/17/18)
Alan Sagner, a major benefactor of the Jewish community of Greater MetroWest NJ and beyond, and a strong backer of the Democratic Party and other liberal causes, died Jan. 3 at his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. He was 97.