Blog

09 October 2013

Reading Torah

By Judy Roitman, October 2013 I am the daughter and granddaughter of cantors (my grandfather was the great David Roitman). I was raised in a Conservative-leading-towards-Orthodox home, with many Orthodox relatives. When, as an adult living in Lawrence, KS, I first witnessed a woman reading the Torah during services, I began to cry. Something integral…

09 October 2013

Coming of Age, Again

By Cathy Swerdlow, October 2013 I became a Bat Mitzvah at a Conservative synagogue in New York State in 1965, but it took me years to realize that my ceremony and that of the boys in my class were not equal. You see, I conducted the Friday evening service only. And, after reciting the Kiddush,…

09 October 2013

Men and women together at the Kotel 1967

By Andrew Kaplan, October 2013 I’m an American who served with the Israel Defense Force in the Golan Heights during the Six Day War. A few days after the war ended, I was in East Jerusalem, which at that time was still under martial law. I immediately went to the Western Wall, which of course,…

09 October 2013

Davening in Monsey

By Michal Boyarsky, October 2013 As a child, I attended a shul in ultra-Orthodox Monsey, New York. Ours was the odd one out in that neighborhood: other families walked to shul, the men dressed in black-and-white suits and black hats, the women wearing dark dresses and thick stockings. Our family drove fifteen minutes to get…

09 October 2013

Summer of ’89

By Ruti Kadish, October 2013 In the summer of 1989, at the age of 25, I celebrated my bat mitzvah at Jewish summer camp. Growing up in Israel, reaching the age of mitzvot was marked by a meal with extended family in our home. In my secular Ashkenazi home, heavily informed by my mother’s kibbutz…

09 October 2013

Women of the Wall, Judaism, and you!

I want your help to bolster Israel’s women’s rights movement. You can bolster this front-line work by demonstrating the depth of support for the notion that women should be full partners in modern Jewish life.

08 October 2013

Torah and Half-a-Torah

When I was Bat-Mitzvahed in a Conservative synagogue a long time ago, girls did not read from the Torah. Bat Mitzvahs took place on Friday night, not Saturday morning. Girls did not wear a tallit, and their speeches about the meaning of the Haftorah portion they read were truncated. As a Hebrew Day school student,…

08 October 2013

Taking Our Place: Faye Moskowitz

October 2013 I can still picture myself, a little girl, sitting among my aunts, my bubbie, and my mother in the balcony of the small Detroit schul where from time to time we looked down to pick out our family’s men as they prayed. I have earlier impressions of a time when I was still…

03 October 2013

The Ins and Outs of Israel

Although anti-Zionists claim that Israel will always be an ethnocentric society that cannot help but exclude and discriminate, we at NIF reject that. For all of its complexities, there’s nothing about the makeup of Israel that leads inexorably to racism.

02 October 2013

Briefing on Israeli High Court ruling on Asylum Seekers

In September, Israel’s High Court struck down a law that imprisoned asylum seekers for years without trial. The ruling was a big win for Israeli democracy.

The Ins and Outs of Israel

Briefing on Israeli High Court ruling on Asylum Seekers

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