One of the pleasures of a Jewish community newspaper is having intelligent, thoughtful people with opposing views duke it out in the opinion pages. Such is the case this week with Congregation Emanu-El Rabbi Emeritus Stephen Pearce and former Kitchen executive director Yoav Schlesinger debating whether ordained rabbis — and, indeed, the synagogue as an…
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Opinion
Local Voice
When you treat us as a mere statistic, you fail Jews of color like me
“Are there really that many Jews of color?” I’ve been asked this question countless times. I hear it when I bring up Jewish diversity or make the case for…
Local Voice
Why Jews should support the state’s high school ethnic studies curriculum
Last week in J., our colleague Rabbi Serena Eisenberg wrote a harsh critique of California’s proposed Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum headlined “Why are…
History
FDR had a Jewish strategy much like the one in ‘Plot Against America’
In HBO’s recent adaptation of the Philip Roth novel “The Plot Against America,” American Jews are coerced by Pres. Charles Lindbergh to move to rural…
Local Voice
Mainstream Judaism needs to wake up
I read with dismay Rabbi Stephen Pearce’s opinion piece on jweekly.com last week, “Who is officiating — and why?” In it, he argues that rabbis are…
Local Voice
Counting Jews of color: Are we asking the right questions?
I know it is not Passover season, but I found myself thinking about the fourth child — the one who does not know how to ask — when I was reading Ira…
Local Voice
Why are school boards OK’ing California’s flawed ethnic studies model?
Local school boards are inexplicably endorsing the draft California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum that Gov. Newsom and the state board of education…
Local Voice
To accurately count Jews of color, we need to challenge our assumptions
Two summers ago, I published an academic book about blacks and Jews that did not include a single black Jew in the narrative. Ilana Kaufman, founder and…
Religion
Digital-first Jewish communities will outlast the pandemic
The other day, I saw an interesting Facebook post written by a college student who lives in New York. She was looking to find a daily morning minyan.…