Uriel Heilman RSS

is JTA's senior writer and former managing editor. Follow him on Twitter at @urielheilman

Latest

• Remembering Rabbanit Bracha Kapach, lifeline to Jerusalem’s poor

  November 26, 2013 10:21am

  From her humble beginnings as a 14-year-old mother, Yemenite immigrant and cleaning lady, Jerusalem’s Rabbanit Bracha Kapach — who died Tuesday at 90 — rose to win the Israel Prize.

• Schechter schools considering embracing patrilineal descent

  November 22, 2013 9:12am

  With Schechter schools in serious decline, the network’s board just took a vote that could dramatically alter the way Conservative day schools approach the question of who is a Jew.

• Reform’s Rick Jacobs hails new openness in Israel to religious pluralism

  November 19, 2013 2:17pm

  Reform leader Rabbi Rick Jacobs is hailing Naftali Bennett, Israel’s modern Orthodox religious services minister, as a breath of fresh air even as Bennett draws some red lines on religious pluralism in Israel.

• NYT concedes error on Palestinian photo

  November 19, 2013 1:14pm

  New York Times editors conceded they were wrong to use a sympathetic photograph of a Palestinian mother to illustrate a story about her son’s stabbing to death of an Israeli soldier.

• On Israeli religious reforms, Naftali Bennett still figuring out road map

  November 19, 2013 11:16am

  Though Naftali Bennett, Israel’s minister of religious services, has blazed a quick path on some religious reforms, don’t expect him to rush into some of the areas considered most crucial to American Jewish pluralism advocates: civil marriage and non-Orthodox conversion.

• Five places the Jews should ski this year

  November 13, 2013 11:54am

  Need kosher food on the slopes? Something for the kids or non-skiers in your family? JTA runs down the five best spots in America for Jews to test the powder this year.

• Conservative synagogues wrestle with non-Jews in the pews

  November 13, 2013 11:07am

  The question of how Conservative synagogues treat non-Jews cuts to the heart of a philosophical and practical debate within a movement struggling over its middle-of-the-road identity.

• Dershowitz backs Avi Weiss in dispute with Israeli Rabbinate

  November 11, 2013 1:52pm

  Attorney Alan Dershowitz is asking Israeli President Shimon Peres to intervene in the case of the apparent blacklisting of Rabbi Avi Weiss by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate.

• Jerry Silverman: Not just talk when federations meet in Israel for G.A.

  November 4, 2013 10:07am

  Jerry Silverman, CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, says debate and action will distinguish this year’s General Assembly, slated for Nov. 10-12 in Jerusalem, from past G.A. conferences.

• With vacant space, Conservative and Reform temples turn to Orthodox

  October 31, 2013 12:22pm

  Saddled with excess space due to dwindling attendance, Reform and Conservative synagogues are reinventing themselves as homes for Orthodox Jewish institutions.