Short Takes

An App That’ll Chant Your Haftarah Portion

04/17/2012 | Julie Wiener | Associate Editor

Two new mobile apps are poised to revolutionize bar/bat mitzvah preparation, and possibly the whole practice of learning to chant Torah.

This week, Rabbi Charlie Schwartz and Russel Neiss — Jewish educators, techies and friends — released PocketTorah, which enables users to read and hear every Torah and Haftarah portion from virtually any Android or Apple device.

The Counting Of The Omer, Beatboxing Included

04/17/2012 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week

The playing of musical instruments during the Omer period is frowned upon.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage is looking to increase the number of younger people who cross its threshold.

Why not turn a restriction into an opportunity?

Letting His Hair Down For Tzedakah

04/10/2012 | Helen Chernikoff | Staff Writer

Gil Adler isn’t a rebel — he just looks like one, with that crazy mane. Appearances to the contrary, he’s a licensed accountant and he served on a reconnaissance unit in the Israeli Defense Forces.

And oh, yeah, he’s growing his hair to make wigs for child cancer patients, and in memory of a childhood friend who died of cancer.

The friend, Eitan Shapiro, died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma just two months after his graduation from Frisch, a yeshiva high school in Paramus, N.J., in 2002.

Medium Paper, Large Insult

04/10/2012 | Stewart Ain | Staff Writer

Is the comparison of an Israel defender to a Hitler apologist fair game, or an offensive characterization that pushes free expression too far?

Rutgers University believes one of its school newspapers crossed that line last week and has launched a bias investigation into what it calls an “offensive parody” of a student whose pro-Zionist views have made him the subject of ridicule and threats.

New Name, New Project, New Orleans

04/03/2012 | Helen Chernikoff | Staff Writer

Disaster relief experts know the story. In the wake of a catastrophe like 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, a stricken city or town will be deluged with money, aid and attention that recedes all too soon when public sympathy weakens or is drawn elsewhere. Of course, there are exceptions.

Like movie star Brad Pitt, whose Make It Right nonprofit is rebuilding the city’s devastated Ninth Ward, a New York-based Jewish organization also has made a commitment to the Crescent City’s recovery.

You Can Call Them ‘Occupy Zionism’

04/03/2012 | Doug Chandler | Special To The Jewish Week

The social protests that began in Tel Aviv last July and grew into a national movement embraced by hundreds of thousands of Israelis has focused on such issues as housing, education, health care and the shrinking middle class.

But Stav Shaffir, one of 12 young adults who launched the movement, told The Jewish Week last week that something else was on her mind, as well.