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Dear Readers, The first Hanukkah candle is lit this year on the evening of Sunday, December 22, which means of course, the fourth will be lit on Christmas. While some might say that the Jewish holiday’s overlap with the most major of Christian days might result in...
Tidewater is fortunate to have so many great Hanukkah events taking place around town this year. Check some of them out here. Saturday, December 14 Ohef Sholom Temple OSTY Chanukah Party Sunday, Dec. 15, 11:30 Am–2:30 pm Simon Family JCC Latkapalooza A day filled with...
A community celebration of Hanukkah, Latkepalooza features three children’s books and authors, a camp extravaganza, light lunch and latkes, raffle, crafts, and live music. Latkepalooza 2019 is a family-friendly mini-book festival filled with group activities, camp...
Nearly 300 people arrived at Ohef Sholom Temple on Saturday, November 16 for the Temple’s 175th Anniversary Gala. The evening was beyond expectations, and really offered something for everyone: a jazz quartet to start the party, a dance band, and a piano bar where...
The Fifth Annual Great Big Challah Bake offered a chance to learn and experience the joy and mitzvah of making challah. Chaired by darcy Bloch, B’nai israel Congregation invited all Jewish women to participate in this event, which took place last month at the...
For its first event in Tidewater in recent years, national and regional leadership of Hadassah could only guess what the turnout would be for a program on ethical issues surrounding end-of- life. The event on Sunday, November 3 at the Simon Family JCC did not...
Super Sunday is the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s annual phone-a-thon fundraiser dating back to the 1980’s. This year’s ‘community call’ had kid-friendly written all over it. A group of emerging leaders known as the Rishon committee, led by Amie Harrell,...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Here we go again: Just this month, two more cases of the abuse of Holocaust imagery have surfaced and created an international stir. In November, Russian figure skater Anton Shulepov wore an Auschwitz- themed costume during his free skating performance...
Tidewater’s Jewish community came together on September 26 to find strength in shared values, envision our community’s future, and IGNITE our 2020 Community Campaign. We celebrated our Tidewater community and recognized the individual impact of each gift, as well as...
This story originally appeared on Kveller. I’m sitting in a sold-out first weekend movie premiere of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, delighted by the fact that this movie was filmed in my Pittsburgh neighborhood, Squirrel Hill. it’s an upscale, multicultural...
Very minor spoilers ahead for The Irishman—but nothing big, we promise. (JTA)—The irishman, Martin Scorsese’s latest organized crime epic, is now streamable on Netflix. Even if the significant digital de-aging of the actors involved is a bit distracting, the film’s...
NEW YORK (JTA)—Sacha Baron Cohen has made a career out of playing absurd comedic characters, from the dopey Brit Ali G to the Kazakh journalist Borat to the Israeli veteran Erran Morad. He rarely gives interviews and stays relatively far from the movie star limelight....
What did Secretary of State John Kerry say that caused former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren to say that U.S. policy toward Israeli has become “sad, tragic and dangerous?” That led Sen. Ted Cruz to say that Kerry and President Barack Obama are...
With the 24th season of the Virginia Festival of Jewish Film briskly underway, national and international movies, including documentaries and full feature dramas created by award winning Jewish writers and filmmakers, are being shown at multiple locales around...
Jewish community leaders, clergy, elected officials and professionals from across the Commonwealth gathered on December 14 at the Executive Mansion for an early Hanukkah celebration. Only the third such party held at the Mansion, Governor Terry McAuliffe and his wife...
BINA High School celebrated its 10-year anniversary honoring Amy Brooke on Dec. 9 and 10. Many alumni returned to Norfolk to be a part of the celebration, travelling from New York, New Jersey, and Maryland—several with young families—to catch up with their old...
It‘s never too early to think about how to leave your mark on the community and how you want to be remembered. Each year by using disposable income charitably, people make an imprint on the Tidewater Jewish community. That choice is an investment—whether it is making...
Community-wide fundraising phone-a-thon Sunday, January 22, 9 am–1 pm Reba & Sam Sandler Family Campus Asking questions is one of the most time-honored traditions of Judaism, and the young adults organizing this year’s Super Sunday community-wide phone-a-thon have...
Last December I traveled to India with American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s (JDC) Entwine. My peers and I connected with the Jewish community, particularly the Jewish Youth Pioneers (JYP), a young-adult delegation of Jewish-Indians who live in the greater...
Since launching in September, the Tidewater Jewish Foundation’s Life & Legacy program has created new levels of excitement and engagement within the Tidewater Jewish community. The Harold Grinspoon Foundation’s Life & Legacy program is a four-year initiative...
(New York, NY)—In a powerful statement issued by an array of Holocaust institutions, scholars and educators from around the world (including United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s Holocaust Commission), an alarm is being sounded on the rise of groups that promote...
In early December, Dana Cohen, a child survivor of the Holocaust and a member of the Holocaust Commission, Elena Barr Baum, director of the Holocaust Commission, and I attended the annual conference of the National Council for the Social Studies in Washington, DC,...
Now in its ninth year, the Stein Family College Scholarship will begin accepting applications on January 3, 2017 for the 2017-2018 academic year. The annual grant for Jewish students in Tidewater provides a scholarship of up to $10,000 a year for college tuition. The...
Before the turkey was put in the oven and the potatoes mashed, Hebrew Academy of Tidewater Konikoff Center of Learning and Strelitz Early Childhood Education Center celebrated the time- honored tradition of Grandparents’ Day on Wednesday, Nov. 23. More than 160...
Holidays, December 19, 2016
The Middle East is a place where one plus one rarely equals two. Rather, it is a multifaceted and extraordinarily complicated region that has experienced escalated turbulence and dramatic change. To maneuver through this Middle East confusion, one almost needs a map....
New is the word at the Simon Family JCC Fitness Center. “We’ve got new equipment, new weights, new paint, new flooring, new practically everything,” says Howard Roesen, chair Simon Family JCC fitness and wellness committee. Among the many improvements, the fitness...
The Community Relations Council of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater invites local first through 12th graders to participate in its fifth annual Israel Poster Contest. A list of “cool facts” about Israel is available at www.JewishVA.org/...
For more information, visit www.simonfamilyjcc.org/filmfestival Saturday, January 14 | 7:30pm On the Map Doors Open at 6:45pm | Sandler Center for the Performing Arts | 201 Market Street, Virginia Beach Directed by Dani Menkin | 2016 | Israel | 85 min Against...
As Tidewater’s Lee and Bernard Jaffe* Family Jewish Book Festival was gearing up, the Lessans Family Annual Book Festival at the Bender JCC of Greater Washington was winding down. For its closing program on Sunday, Nov. 13, Jennifer Smith, director of arts and culture...
One hundred anti-Semitic incidents occurred in the 10 days following the presidential election, representing about 12 percent of hate incidents in the U.S. recorded by a civil rights watchdog. The report by the Southern Poverty Law Center looked at 867 hate incidents...
(JTA)—The upset victory by Donald Trump in the 2016 elections stunned a Jewish activist and leadership class that is at times as divided as the electorate at large. JTA asked some of those leaders to describe their concerns and expectations in a series of brief...