Other News

Mental health and wellbeing has received a larger spotlight over the past few years. With the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantines, lack of in-person contact, and day-to-day stress, it’s no surprise that everyone from Olympic athletes to college students have made mental...

BBYO celebrated the end of the school year at Harbor Park watching the Norfolk Tides on Sunday, May 15. BBYO members, prospects, and their families enjoyed lunch and plenty of cold soft drinks on a private patio during this warm afternoon. While not the final program,...

(JTA)—In the 1920s, the National Council of Jewish Women helped establish the first 10 birth control clinics in the United States, which later became Planned Parenthood clinics. Now, with the right to abortion under threat, the group is partnering with the National...

WASHINGTON (JTA)—Antisemitism is often not taken seriously until it becomes deadly, said Deborah Lipstadt, the Holocaust scholar whose nomination to be the State Department’s antisemitism monitor was delayed as she tangled with Republican senators who were peeved at...

(JTA)—The man charged with killing 10 people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket Saturday, May 14, allegedly was motivated by a conspiracy theory that has spurred recent deadly attacks on Jews, among others. An online manifesto attributed to Payton Gendron, 18,...

Jewish Family Service of Tidewater hosted its 18th annual Run, Roll, or Stroll race day event on Sunday, May 1. After two years of postponing due to COVID, this year’s Run, Roll, or Stroll came back in a big way with a record turn-out, with more than 350 people...

The New York Times editorial board said in an editorial published Tuesday, April 30, that the newspaper’s publishing of “an appalling political cartoon” is “evidence of a profound danger—not only of anti-Semitism but of numbness to its creep.” The newspaper also...

Fourth and fifth grade students at Hebrew Academy of Tidewater spent myriad hours of study and planning to prepare for the school’s recent Science Fair, the capstone of weeks of hard work. Almost 100 visitors attended this year, along with HAT’s familiar and dedicated...

On Monday, March 18, the Simon Family JCC celebrated the JCC Book Club’s 10th anniversary and 100th read with book club author, Marilyn Simon Rothstein. Rothstein visited the Reba and Sam Sandler Family Campus as a part of her Jewish Book Council book tour and the Lee...

Members of the Tidewater Chavurah got together at Rabbi Ellen Jaffe-Gill and Spencer Gill’s home to bake Hamantashen in preparation for Purim. A variety of fillings were used including lemon, poppy, apple, blueberry, pumpkin, and chocolate. A multi-generational event,...

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation recently added several objects of Judaica to its collections: a sterling silver and gold Kiddush cup and a silver and gold yad (Torah pointer). These mark the first such objects in the Foundation’s holdings and reflect the...

Jewish Family Service of Tidewater recently received a grant to work in collaboration with Simon Family JCC to develop a fully inclusive after-school program. The grant supports the initial development and implementation of inclusive programming for children with...

AMSTERDAM (JTA)—Like many voters in democratic national elections, I almost always hope that whoever is elected will be able to serve out their full term—even if they weren’t my pick. This is especially true in my native Israel, whose infamously brittle coalitions...

A personal trainer for 16 years, Simon Family JCC trainer Susan Vann-Spruill says it is important for gym members to approach fitness with a plan. Without one, she says, the results are often minimal or worse. “Many people come to the gym regularly without a real plan...

WASHINGTON (JTA)—It looks like Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating alleged improprieties associated with Donald Trump’s presidency and election campaign, is wrapping up his report. Or maybe not. Mueller has over his near-two-year run led a leak-free...

Imagine a kitchen filled with three groups of teenagers hard at work baking chocolate chip cookies. Imagine they are Jewish teens from across Tidewater, representing a wide variety of schools and cities. And then, imagine they are baking cookies for others. Stop...

A component of many medical conditions, pain is complex. It is not just one thing—and the process of teasing out the one core issue at the root of the pain is challenging. In the first half of Outsmart Your Pain!, Lisa Barr, MD, reveals how stress and pain can become...

Israel is the 10th healthiest country in the world—54 spots ahead of the United States. The Bloomberg Healthiest Country Index, published last month, ranked 169 nations based on factors such as life expectancy and access to sanitation and medical care. Countries were...

LOS ANGELES (JTA)—It’s a story that would not sound too out of place in 2019: New York’s leading newspaper accuses the president of the United States of corruption and the latter sues the paper’s publisher for libel. Striking back, the publisher declares in an...

(JTA)—With the announcement in January that it had picked Robert Kraft as its 2019 laureate, the Genesis Prize seemed poised for a calmer year. Last year the foundation that awards the “Jewish Nobel,” as it’s called, picked actress and director Natalie Portman as an...

I formally retired from my Cardiology group after 45 years of practice in July 2018. Fortunate to be able to ease into retirement by ending night and weekend call after 35 years (which is obviously quite demanding and stressful), for the last several years, my...

I’m glad to have this opportunity to reflect on my “golden years.” My long-suffering wife of 45 years, Carol, and I are worriers. So, prior to retiring, we spent lots of time worrying about having adequate health care and income so that once we retired we would, for...

“What will I do?” After more than 40 years as a Clinical Laboratory Scientist/ Laboratory manager, I decided to retire. It was a wonderful career of hospital lab work and work in a private practice with the Group for Internal Medicine, where I had the privilege of...

To the many colleagues and supporters of Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who died Wednesday, Feb. 6 at the age of 67, he was a man of vision whose enormous drive to succeed both facilitated and complicated his relentless efforts on behalf of the Jewish people. As head of...