Gloria Steinem, the feminist who turbocharged the women’s rights movement and cast the liberation of women as part of the broader project of eliminating other bigotries, died at 92.

Andrew Waxman, a banking and risk management consultant, has written what amounts to a field guide to the varieties of being and praying Jewish in New York City. For My Year in New York Synagogues, he spent his Friday evenings and Shabbat mornings in 2025 visiting nearly every synagogue within walking distance of his home on the Upper West Side.

As the sacred days of Rosh Hashanah approach, there’s a perceptible change in the air. Once the Jerusalem breeze begins lingering, I can almost smell the approaching Days of Awe. Snippets of the selichot penitential prayers and the wail of the shofar are carried by this breeze.

For 32 years, Esther Melamed has been the secular studies principal at Beth Jacob High School. That’s a lot of students she has seen and guided. Melamed estimates that over the years she has taught 800 to 900 graduates; a perfect background to bolster conversations about the 250th anniversary of the US and the future of America.

Ask Jonathan Lev, executive director at the Boulder JCC, what he is most proud of at his sprawling campus, and the talking points are significant.

336,004,951. That number summarizes the main accomplishment of Dolly Parton, the beloved country singer who died last month as an enormously wealthy woman. It is the number of books distributed for free, to children in the US and in four foreign countries, as of this month, by the early-childhood literacy intervention program she founded 31 years ago.