The shul’s Book Circle group has chosen to delve into the pages of Hugo Hamilton’s book, The Pages, for the July selection, to be discussed at the meeting on Thursday, July 27, at 3:30 p.m., in the shul’s community room. The deckle edges of the novel itself suggest the way into the past — Germany under the Nazi regime — with clues from that history leading to a present day mystery. It is a [...]
A stack of thank-you letters from Greenport High School students arrived at the shul recently. The students had visited the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City as the culmination of their social studies unit on the Holocaust, and donations to our shul’s Yellow Candle Project had largely financed the cost of the buses to transport 80 students to the museum. Four of the students Zoomed into a Shabbat service in May and talked [...]
Visit The Studio Of Judith K. Weiner on Sunday, July 23, from 2-5 p.m. The Judaism and Art Group, sponsors of the Art Show currently mounted in the shul’s community room, is offering the Congregation opportunities to see the studios where member artists create their work. Coming up on Sunday afternoon, July 23, from 2 to 5, is an intimate tour of the setting that inspires the abstract concepts of shul member Judith [...]
The Little Engine That Could We’re all familiar with the popular children’s story about the little engine that was able to do more than expected. Over here at Shofar headquarters, we’ve heard that phrase applied to our shul — that one and also the one that says “small, but mighty.” There might be something to the perception that small means diminished expectations, but as the photos on this page illustrate (as well as those sprinkled [...]
Writing for The Forward, Benyamin Cohen declared “...It was “a very Jewish Tony Awards” on June 11, with antisemitism-themed shows big winners. “Leopoldstadt,” about a Viennese family decimated by the Holocaust won best play; and “Parade,” about the real-life lynching of Jewish businessman Leo Frank, won for best musical revival. Other Jewish winners were Brandon Uranowitz (best actor) for his role in “Leopoldstadt”; Alfred Uhry (writer “Parade,” best musical revival); Michael Arden (best director, “Parade”); [...]
The Biden administration has released the country’s first-ever national strategy to combat antisemitism, calling on government, law enforcement and schools to stanch the spread of online hate. Last year, the Anti-Defamation League reported 3,697 incidents of antisemitic assault, harassment and vandalism in the United States. The figure, a 36 percent increase over 2021, is the largest number of incidents against Jews in the United States since the organization began its assessments in 1979. The new [...]
With Holocaust restitution having paved the way, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is exploring the provenance of items in its collections in search of looted art. The move to return art, particularly art stolen by the Nazis during WWII, acknowledges controversy in recent years over the acquisitions processes that bring valuable artifacts from across the globe into collections here in the United States. In the past few years, the Met has [...]
In a modern conservation laboratory on the grounds of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Oswiecim, Poland, a man wearing blue rubber gloves uses a scalpel to scrape away rust from the eyelets of small brown shoes worn by children before they were murdered in gas chambers there. Colleagues at the other end of a long worktable rub away dust and grime, using soft cloths on the leather of the fragile objects. The work is [...]
The Sackler family will pay out $6 billion to fight the ongoing opioid epidemic and also give up control of their company, Purdue Pharma in exchange for protection from current and future civil lawsuits against its opioid business, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled on May 30. Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and its owners, the Sackler family, are facing hundreds of lawsuits across the country for the company’s [...]
Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, was convicted by a federal jury of all 63 charges against him. Bowers now faces the possibility of the death sentence at the hands of the same jury for the deadliest attack ever on Jewish people in the U.S. Bowers was convicted of 11 capital counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death, [...]
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