Submitted Comments RSS Feed Comments by Benjamin Goldberg
Posted in: Forward: Women at Jewish organizations lag behind in promotions, pay
You could make a comparison between the salaries ofwomen and men, but the study would have to control for all the factors Ami mentioned: size or organization, years in office, prior experience, etc. But this requires a level of statistical sophistication that the Forward was either unwilling or unable to muster. However, it is still clear that women are over-represented in the workforce of Jewish organizations but underrepresented in their executive professional leadership.
Posted in: Breaking the fast, Sephardi style
My grandfather told me that when he was growing up in the 1930s the break the fast meal his Polish/Russian parents served was always meat, and that everybody got sick afterwards.
Posted in: Debating Hillel
I am also a Jewish student at Northwestern, and I concur with everything that Marisa wrote. What these two essays highlight is that every campus is different. For example, at Sam's campus there are not enough students to justify having multiple kinds of services; at Northwestern, we have three different kinds every Friday. My hope is that Hillel, both at individually at schools and as a movement, will continue to empower students to create their own Jewish experiences and stories as opposed to trying to force everyone in one box. Hillel should provide resources (physical and intellectual space, funds, access to a copier, etc) for students to create the Jewish life they want to see on their campuses. This is what we do at Northwestern, and what should be done on every campus.
Posted in: New 'Shalom Sesame' using Grover to bridge Israel-Disapora gap
"Its hard to comment on jta all day and still hold down a job" Perhaps you should take the hint and cut back....
Posted in: Hillel holding largest confab
In case you were wondering, Clayton, Ga. is the location of Camp Ramah Darom, which functions as a kosher conference center in the off-season.
Posted in: Conservative rabbi says Georgia’s kosher law unconstitutional
Like "organic" or "fair trade", kosher means many things to many people.I think full disclosure is the way to go. Even within Orthodox certification agencies there is a wide array of standards, and rather than require people to know which agencies have what rules, each establishment can simply post what they do and do not do, and people can decide for themselves what to eat. I've seen these posters in New Jersey, and they make sense. Full disclosure also prevents fraud because customers will know exactly how the establishment defines kosher. If an establishment lies about their practices, it would be easier to prosecute them under existing fraud laws because they can not claim that what they did is kosher by somebody's definition. Also, I agree that having a state agency in charge of this does raise some important first amendment issues that any law must address.
Posted in: On Shavuot, why is that calligraphy singing?
I think it's wonderful that people are learning to read Torah as an expression of their Jewish identity, and I would even agree that learning to leyn forces the reader to pay close attention to the words of the text and brings out lots of important meanings. However, I wonder if the Jewish community does a disservice to itself by expecting everyone to be able to do so. As Mark Oppenheimer points out in Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America, only until this past century were all Jewish boys (and later girls) expected to be able to read Torah, a fact he connects to a new importance placed on Hebrew literacy in the wake of the establishment of Israel. As a result, Oppenheimer suggests, we have become a people who read the Torah instead of studying and following it. The line of demarkation between Jews and Gentiles become the ability to chant aloud ancient texts instead of distinctive practices such as Shabbat and kashrut based on these texts. Personally, I would prefer that children and adults preparing for a Bar/t Mitzvah spend their time studying the major themes of Jewish thought and practice and coming to conclusions as to what they believe and practice, as opposed to worrying about whether a trop mark is a munach or a l'garmay. Let's leave Torah reading to the professionals and worry about being Jews.
Posted in: Sotomayor, pork and the meaning of Latino
This post is incredibly moving and Mr. Kampeas speaks with depth about this issue. Yesterday I decided that Cardozo was Hispanic, but this essay made me reconsider these categories. I'm an Ashkenazi Jew with roots in Poland, Russia, Hungary, Germany, etc. When I signed up to be a bone marrow donor recently, they asked me to indicate my specific ethnicity( to increase likelihood of a match) and I hesitantly put down Eastern European. This felt strange because I consider myself a Jew by both ethnicity and religion. This experience and Mr. Kampeas' post bring up larger issues of Jewish identity: how do racial and national identities coincide with Jewish identity? Are Jews "white"? Is a Jew with ancestral roots in the same Polish shtetle as mine but whose ancestors happened to immigrate to Argentina instead of the US "Hispanic"? What about Jews of African descent like the Ethiopians in Israel or the communities in Uganda and Nigeria? Or the Indian Jews of Mumbai or the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng? These are fascinating issues to probe in 21 century Jewish identity. Once again, thank you Mr. Kampeas for your enlightening and highly personal post.
Posted in: U.N. pulls badges from Jewish NGOs
"Others were barred because they were found to be hiding clown paraphernalia" I imagine this goes down as the first circus-related credential revocation in the history of diplomacy. Just goes to show what a Purim spiel this whole conference was.
RSS Feed Breaking News
Updated 02/09/12 @ 05:54PM EST
- A poll showed that nearly half of likely voters believed the United States should use military force to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
- Rabbi Gunther Plaut, a major figure in Reform Judaism, died in Toronto.
- The application for a proposed Hebrew-language charter school was accepted by the District of Columbia Public Charter School board.
- A truck driving calves from Eilat to the Golan Heights was hijacked into the West Bank.
- U.S. Rep. Howard Berman introduced legislation that would allow eligible Israeli nationals to receive non-immigrant investor visas in the United States.
- Poll: Half of U.S. voters back strike on nuclear Iran
- Reform leader Rabbi Gunther Plaut dies
- D.C. Hebrew-language charter school accepted for review
- Op-Ed: Kick the reaction addiction on campus
- Berman moves to grant investor visas to Israelis
- Holy cow! Calves hijacked into Palestinian territory
- Report: Israeli journalist also works for prime minister
- Larry Greenfield tapped to lead JINSA
Posted in: United Synagogue biennial: The overview
12/10/09 08:40 PM
How about publishing your own article(s) like you did for the Reform biennial a few weeks ago?