GETTING THE STORY WRONG: Ari Goldman helped cover the Crown Heights riots for The New York Times 20 years ago and today recalls his outrage over how his paper framed the story. “In all my reporting during the riots I never saw — or heard of — any violence by Jews against blacks,” the journalism professor writes in the New York Jewish Week. “But the Times was dedicated to this version of events: blacks and Jews clashing amid racial tensions.”
THE CASE AGAINST KIDDUSH CLUBS: In The Jewish Press, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz writes that Kiddush clubs “exclude women (and many men) and send an inappropriate message to our kids about drinking and about what shul and Shabbat are supposed to be about.”
MOTHER, MOTHER MAKE ME A MATCH: Single Jews who are tired of JDate can now let their mothers do the clicking. The Washington Jewish Week reports on JMom, a new Jewish dating site that claims some 1,000 parents as members. "I think Jewish mothers get a bum rap," explained the mother of the site’s founders. "There’s nothing wrong with suggesting a date for your child, but I will not push them.”
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NO HANGING BADGES ON THE STATUES, PLEASE: The B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum is no longer much of a museum, the Forward reports, noting that its collection is either in storage or on display in its office suites and viewable only by appointment. A former museum director tells the paper that she had to write a letter telling a B’nai B’rith official “not to hang his ID badge off an important statue in the collection.”
RALLYING AROUND A TOTTENHAM BARBER: Londoners are raising money to help out 89-year-old barber Aaron Biber, whose Tottenham shop was ransacked by rioters. "They’re meshuggenahs, they stole my kettle and my hairdryer,” Biber told Britain’s Jewish Chronicle. "It’s mindless. I’ve had my window smashed before but nothing like this.”
EAST AFRICA’S WANDERING RABBI: As a U.S. Navy chaplain, Rabbi Jon Cutler has traveled throughout East Africa, working to promote interfaith understanding, enabling African clergy to meet their first-ever rabbi and visiting exotic Jewish communities. Pittsburgh’s Jewish Chronicle has the story.
HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD JEWESSES: Jewish actresses are having a moment, the L.A. Jewish Journal reports, and they are being cast in diverse roles. “Of course, it was hilarious when I told my family, ‘I’m in an Adam Sandler film! And I’m playing his Palestinian love interest!’” the Sephardic star Emmanuelle Chriqui tells the paper.
A BRIDGE OF TILES: In San Francisco, nearly 150 Jews and Chinese recently came together around a shared passion: mah jongg. And what did they eat? Chinese food, of course. San Francisco’s j. weekly was on the scene.
PHILLY FOREIGN POLICY: A Philadelphia City Councilman is vowing to introduce a council measure expressing support for a U.S. Senate resolution that threatened to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority if the Palestinians push for statehood at the U.N., Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent reports.
