Cantor Jerry Berkowitz spent weeks trying to figure out how to get a Torah from Manitowoc to Uganda. “I don’t want it in baggage. Why? Because it’s a Torah,” Berkowitz gently explained. Berkowitz was the cantor at Congregation Beth-El Ner Tamid, formerly of Mequon, until 2010. “I wanted it with us at all times and I wanted it to be treated properly,” he added. Nine cantors from around the nation, including Berkowitz and Hazzan Jeremy Stein of Congregation Beth Israel Ner Tamid of Glendale, have left for Uganda, to connect with the Abayudaya Jews there....
In a 17-minute podcast, Sam Harris delivers one of my favorite defenses of Israel. He’s a surprise source of support for the Jewish state. Harris is one of America’s leading public atheists, an intellectual and a philosopher with a podcast that’s downloaded one million times per episode, according to reports. He’s written five New […]
You’ve seen cooking shows where chefs get down and dirty. Now see it live in Milwaukee. This month, Israeli chefs Gili Altman and Yehuda Ninniyo will go head-to-head during a “Shakshuka Shakedown” and will be cooking and meeting people during other local appearances. The men are visiting from Milwaukee and Madison’s partnership region in […]
Israel and Palestine. For many in the Jewish community, these two words conjure up a slew of images, memories and feelings. Knowing those feelings is a good idea for anyone embarking on this year’s Milwaukee Jewish Community Read, Yossi Klein Halevi’s “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor.” It will prove helpful in encounters with ideas […]
MILWAUKEE – Several local agencies and book clubs are partnering to hold a “Milwaukee Jewish Community Read” of a bestselling book, “Letters to my Palestinian Neighbor,” before the author speaks here in May. The Atlantic has hailed the short non-fiction book, by Yossi Klein Halevi, as “one of the best one-volume introductions to the […]
Should a professor refuse to make a recommendation for a student who wants to study in Israel? This issue has been in the news lately. At the University of Michigan, Professor John Cheney-Lippold declined to write a recommendation letter. An image of his refusal note was posted to Facebook on Sept. 16 by Club Z, a […]
Rabbi Nir Barkin, who once served as an emissary to Milwaukee, reports his Reform public school in Israel has cut staff, salaries and progressive Jewish education to survive. In December 2017, the Chronicle reported that new government rules in Israel were shutting down Reform-themed education for children, creating a woeful situation for the nation’s […]
FOX POINT — Rabbi Nir Barkin, a former Israeli emissary to Milwaukee, made a surprise visit to the Milwaukee Jewish Federation Annual Meeting, to honor his friend Moshe Katz. Katz has been nominated by committee to serve as the next Federation board chair. “You are a leader in the spirit of your namesake, Moses,” […]
MILWAUKEE – Shaked Ram’s cousin said to her, “You should do it.” She’s a lifelong Israeli. Her cousin was a student at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and he’d really gotten to know and appreciate his campus Israel fellow. Ram, having grown up in a town of about 800 families in central […]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s adviser for world communities said in an op-ed that critics of the nation-state law that passed last month in the Knesset often are “mistaken and misinformed.” “The accusations about the new law’s effects on Israeli democracy have no connection to the actual content or context of the law,” Sara Greenberg wrote in […]
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