The Jewish Week | Features

Tim Boxer | Thursday, September 2, 2010

At its annual dinner Gift of Life brings bone marrow recipients to meet their donors for the first time. You know it’s going to be an emotional moment when you see tissue boxes on every table.

Lillian Baharestani, 27, wanted to be a donor. She was raised in Queens where her father taught her to always help others. So at Syracuse University she organized a drive for swabs for the Gift of Life registry. As it turned out, her own swab saved a life.

Godsend | Tuesday, August 31, 2010

How Gennady met Nurit

They have different skin colors and different mother tongues. But Ethiopian-born Nurit Beru Kuchuk says: "We have so much in common. We both moved to Israel with our families at a young age and both served in the Israeli army." Her Moldova-born husband, Gennady Kuchuk, adds: "We both spent time in the U.S.; and we are both film professionals." Nurit is a photographer; Gennady is a script writer and film director.

The Matchup | Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Spiritual Housecleaning, Indian Style

‘Where was I?”

Which was really another way of saying, “What in the bleep was I doing?”

I asked myself these questions through my haze as I lay prone on a couch in the living room of an Israeli couple I barely knew.

Lens | Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Horn Of Plenty

Musician-songwriter Phillip Namanworth has performed on Broadway, in concerts, in nightclubs.

During these weeks before Rosh HaShanah, he does a gig each morning for an audience of two — himself and God. During the month of Elul, which precedes the holiday-laden month of Tishri, he blows the shofar every weekday morning in his Manhattan apartment.

In many Jewish communities, shofar blasts come before the Days of Repentance, as a spiritual wake-up call.

Last week Namanworth tried out another horn.

A New York Minute | Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Reconstructing The Tradition

Reconstructionist Judaism, the stream of Judaism that likes to call itself the “fourth branch,” often in the shadow of Conservative, Reform and Orthodox Judaism, is reconstructing itself again. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, located in suburban Philadelphia, announced recently that it is starting a major program to boost its presence in cyberspace, according to the Philadelphia Exponent.