Remembering Ellen Bernstein, 70, the ‘birthmother’ of Jewish environmentalism

Jewish writer and publicist
Shira Dicker February 29, 2024

https://www.jta.org/2024/02/29/obituaries/remembering-ellen-bernstein-70-the-birth-mother-of-jewish-environmentalism

"...For Ellen, who liked to luxuriate in time, the end came quickly: two weeks after a dire diagnosis, one week after the publication of what is sure to be her masterwork — “Toward a Holy Ecology: Reading the Song of Songs in the Age of Climate Crisis.” The biblical love song, she writes, “could be understood as a mediation on our relationship with nature, animated by love.”

When the Song of Songs is read in synagogues around the world this Passover, Ellen’s earth-focused translation will breathe new life into the ancient, deeply sensual text..."

Order the book:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/toward-a-holy-ecology-reading-the-song-of-songs-in-the-age-of-climate-crisis/19664856

#Mazeldon #Jewniverse #JFediverse #JFedi #Environmentalism #Sustainability

Deborah Lipstadt urges New York Jews to ‘bring the joy’ of Judaism despite increased antisemitism

By Luke Tress February 28, 2024

...“It used to be that what happened in Europe sort of migrated to the United States and now we’re seeing it going both ways,” she said. She also repeated a message she has been advancing for months, predating Oct. 7: that antisemitism is a threat to democracy.

She told the congregation that bad actors, particularly autocratic regimes, are fanning the flames of antisemitism to undermine faith in democracies, and that “all government leaders” agree with that assessment, as do members of the U.S. intelligence community..."

https://www.jta.org/2024/02/28/ny/deborah-lipstadt-urges-new-york-jews-to-bring-the-joy-of-judaism-despite-increased-antisemitism

#Mazeldon #Jewniverse #JFediverse #JFedi

Groups working to support Israeli hostages and their families awarded 2024 ‘Jewish Nobel’

By Jackie Hajdenberg February 28, 2024

"...Presented annually since 2013, the award is given by the Genesis Prize Foundation and has historically gone to Jewish celebrities or public figures. More recently, the foundation has given the prize to organizations that together are tackling a crisis in the Jewish community, including in 2022 when it honored groups supporting Jews in Ukraine.

This year, the foundation turned again to a collective: groups working to support Israelis taken hostage when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which quickly became one of the central organizing groups advocating for the release of the hostages, will share this year’s prize with four other groups..."

https://www.jta.org/2024/02/28/israel/groups-working-to-support-israeli-hostages-and-their-families-awarded-2024-jewish-nobel

#Mazeldon #Jewniverse #JFediverse #JFedi

Jenni Asher is set to become first ordained Black woman cantor

By Andrew Esensten and Shoshana McKinney Kirya-Ziraba
February 27, 2024

"Today, the accomplished violinist is a cantorial soloist and a student at the non-denominational Academy for Jewish Religion California in Los Angeles. When she graduates next year, she will become the first Black American woman ordained as a cantor — and one of only two Black cantors in the country, according to the other one, Cantor David Fair.

“It will be a big moment,” said Fair, who was ordained at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College in New York in 2021 and works at Temple Emanuel in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “There are only a handful” of Black clergy leading synagogues in the United States, he added..."

https://www.jta.org/2024/02/27/religion/jenni-asher-is-set-to-become-first-ordained-black-woman-cantor

#Mazeldon #Jewniverse #JFediverse #JFedi

Central Synagogue presents a ‘regendered’ version of the Hebrew Bible, with music and art

By Rachel Ringler
February 27, 2024

https://www.jta.org/2024/02/27/ny/central-synagogue-presents-a-regendered-version-of-the-hebrew-bible-with-music-and-art

See also https://www.beittoratah.org/ to learn more about her organization.

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Let's not be cringe, class.

https://www.jta.org/2024/02/27/ideas/five-things-not-to-ask-a-jew-of-color

#Mazeldon #Jewniverse #JFediverse #JFedi

Yep, that's a facepalm. Do shows not have fact checkers anymore?

"2. Paul Hollywood’s “Passover Cholla” Recipe

Nope, this isn’t a typo. In the fifth season of the “Great British Bake Off,” Jews around their world did a collective facepalm when the judges presented a technical challenge for the bakers for something called a “plaited loaf”… which was indisputably challah. After backlash on X, formerly known as Twitter, one user found a recipe for a “cholla loaf” in one of GBBO judge Paul Hollywood’s cookbooks. Not only is the recipe mind-boggling because of its non-traditional use of milk and butter, but it describes the bread as a “class Jewish loaf… traditionally served at Passover…” aka the one Jewish holiday where Jews don’t eat bread. Now how can you mess up a recipe description that badly?

How they could’ve made it right: Call a challah a challah and get a fact-checker."

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/the-nosher/the-worst-jewish-food-moments-in-pop-culture/

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“Golda” shared the organization’s Most Valuable Film of the Year award with James Hawes’ “One Life,” which stars Anthony Hopkins as Sir Nicholas Winton, a London broker who rescued more than 600 children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia; and Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone Of Interest,” about the everyday life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess and his family living just a wall away from the extermination camp.

The founder of the Cinema for Peace Foundation, Jaka Bizilj, was instrumental in bringing Russian dissident Alexey Navalny to Germany after Navalny’s near-fatal poisoning in 2020. Navalny died last week in a Russian prison.

https://www.jta.org/2024/02/23/culture/golda-biopic-about-israeli-leader-at-war-wins-top-prize-from-cinema-for-peace-foundation

#Mazeldon #Jewniverse #JFediverse #JFedi

"...In the two years since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, this landlocked former Soviet republic in the Caucasus has seen a surprise influx of Jews — mostly liberal young Russians opposed to the war, but also Ukrainians seeking safe haven. Together, their arrival has boosted Armenia’s total Jewish population tenfold, from fewer than a hundred to well over 1,000 today...

Armenia became a Soviet republic in 1920, and following World War II, Jews relocated here from Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Azerbaijan. But after the USSR itself collapsed in 1991, nearly the entire Jewish community of 15,000 families emigrated en masse to Israel, leaving only a handful of aging congregants to keep the dwindling community from disappearing altogether..."

https://www.jta.org/2024/02/22/global/russias-invasion-of-ukraine-inadvertently-sparks-a-jewish-renaissance-in-armenia

#Mazeldon #Jewniverse #JFediverse #JFedi

"...Spiritual self-care demands constant attention to the small voice that murmurs barely-comprehensible information about what one needs from moment to moment.

When it's time to do some serious spiritual heavy lifting, taking a break from things that make it difficult to hear that voice is sometimes key.

It's no coincidence that the mystical sects of many religious traditions weigh in on the consumption of meat and alcohol, and that countless contemporary teachers have suggested taking breaks from our phones, from social media; certain things really do affect one's inner state. I have one friend who stopped eating chicken during her first couple of years in seminary, and other friends have gone celibate or stayed away from news headlines while they were deep into a certain stage of some great internal undertaking...."

https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/nazirite/

#Mazeldon #Jewniverse #JFediverse #JFedi