Andrew Silow-Carroll RSS

is JTA's editor in chief.

Latest

• Richard Siegel left behind a Jewish denomination: Catalogism

  July 17, 2018 12:06pm

    (JTA) — I have belonged to six synagogues as an adult, representing all the major denominations except, purely by chance, Reconstructionism. Perhaps that makes me sound fickle or wishy-washy, but all the congregations have something in common: They are either lay-led or, if not, have a rabbi who encourages congregants to lead the prayers,…

• Richard Siegel, educator who co-edited ‘The Jewish Catalog,’ is dead at 70

  July 13, 2018 3:39pm

  NEW YORK (JTA) — Richard Siegel, an educator who advocated for Jewish culture and arts and co-edited the seminal “Jewish Catalog” series of guides to “do-it-yourself” Judaism, died Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 70 and had been battling cancer for two years, according to a friend and colleague, Barry Holtz, a professor of Jewish…

• How I learned to stop worrying and love an Israeli dance company

  July 11, 2018 12:41pm

  (JTA) — In the quiet opening of “Naharin’s Virus,” an hourlong dance piece by the famed Israeli choreographer Ohed Naharin, an onstage narrator tells you what the evening won’t be about. You the audience will not receive its due. Your curiosity will not be satisfied. You won’t agree on the meaning of what you are about…

• Is ‘non-Jew’ an insult?

  June 26, 2018 4:32pm

  NEW YORK (JTA) — A few months ago I wrote a humor piece titled “Don’t eat off the seder plate, and other tips for non-Jews attending their first seder.” It drew a miffed response from a rabbi friend who often works with interfaith families. He suggested “it’s time to drop terms like ‘non-Jew’ and gentile.”…

• Holocaust comparisons are muddying the immigration debate

  June 19, 2018 5:00pm

  (JTA) — Let me start by stating what should be obvious: Holocaust comparisons are lazy and more often than not hysterical. They diminish Nazism and genocide by making them synonyms for “very bad things.” You may regard the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance stance at the border, and its policy of separating parents and children, as inhumane…

• Your guide to Shavuot, now with 50 percent less facts

  May 18, 2018 2:29pm

  (JTA) — Let’s face it: Shavuot is the National Hockey League of Jewish holidays. In terms of popularity, Passover, the High Holy Days and Hanukkah are the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball. Shavuot may have an intense following, but it’s much smaller. I don’t know if Shavuot is more popular in Canada. For the…

• Mahmoud Abbas’ remarks on the Holocaust help explain why two-state solution is dying

  May 2, 2018 3:55pm

  NEW YORK (JTA) — Rabbi Donniel Hartman had some bad news for his audience on the largely liberal Upper West Side: The two-state solution might not be dead, but it’s not imminent either, and most Israelis don’t believe the two-state solution is “implementable in their lifetime.” It’s not a matter of ideology or triumphalism or…

• The ADL’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week

  April 30, 2018 4:45pm

  (JTA) — Last week, Shabbat couldn’t come soon enough for the Anti-Defamation League. On Wednesday, Starbucks announced that the Jewish group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, seemed to have been demoted from top adviser to a supporting role in the coffee company’s day of diversity training. And on Thursday, the ADL apologized for the way it tweeted about…

• How JTA reported on Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination

  April 4, 2018 4:59pm

  (JTA) — He demanded civil rights by invoking the Hebrew Bible, just one of the many reasons the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. drew praise, admiration and followers among American Jews in the 1960s. And when he was gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee, by an assassin on this date in 1968, JTA reported on the…

• Don’t eat off the seder plate, and other tips for non-Jews attending their first seder

  March 23, 2018 2:58pm

  (JTA) — Every year at Passover, many Jews enjoy inviting non-Jewish guests to the seder, the big family meal during which they recount the tale of the Exodus. Such invitations are extended in a spirit of interfaith cooperation and the conviction that at least one person at the table should actually enjoy himself. For non-Jews…