Features

In 2023, for its 110th Anniversary Magazine, the IJN paired teen interviewers with Holocaust survivors for “Holocaust Across the Generations.” Ami Gelman, then in 9th grade at Denver Academy of Torah, interviewed Cantor Zachary Kutner, who passed away this week.

It was 1943 in Nazi-occupied Holland, and a Jewish baby boy, Efraim Kochba (born Ernst Bernard van Coevorden), had been entrusted to Jacqueline Meents-Lenstra, a Dutch Christian woman, and her Jewish husband by a Jewish couple who were neighbors and later perished in the Holocaust.

Jewish and Israeli-owned restaurants in New York City appear to have a new off-menu offering: introducing Jewish singles to one another. “I feel like going to a restaurant — whether kosher, Jewish- or Israeli-owned — I’m more likely to meet someone who is pro-Israel,” Skye Ostreicher, 35, said.

Behind the imposing stone walls of Eastern State Penitentiary — the Philadelphia prison that once held Al Capone — sits a small, unlikely  synagogue built by inmates, for inmates, nearly a century ago. Now, a new exhibition is telling its story. Eastern State Penitentiary, in Philadelphia’s Fairmount neighborhood, was active from its founding in 1829 until its closing in 1971.

When a cancer diagnosis comes it’s always a shock — and Dr. Loraine Alderman was no exception. What did surprise her, however, was that among the literature she was reading, she wasn’t finding stories about people like herself, even though she fell into the age group of women most likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer.

Raacheli Fried, a Los Angeles native and resident of East Denver, organized a “Tehillim group,” a Psalms group, 11 years ago. People in the group recite Psalms for many reasons, among them a “complete healing,” a refuah shelemah, for sick people. A Tehillim group may also be organized to pray for a single person, as Essie Fleischmann has done.

When Penny Nisson is in synagogue, she prays with the words in the siddur and the melodies of the liturgy. When she is in her art studio, she prays with her paintbrush. Nisson is a spiritual person who loves and lives Judaism. She and her husband Perry incorporate Jewish ritual into their home and they are regulars at East Denver Orthodox Synagogue. Penny Nissan sits in the front at shul, reading, reciting and hearing the words of prayer.

As Shavuot approaches and the anniversary of the revelation of the Torah looms, it is inspiring to contemplate the teachings of those who mastered the Torah on a level that is beyond us. One such master was the Vilna Gaon, the “Genius of Vilna,” Rabbi Elijah son of Shlomo Zalman (d. 1797).

I like the confluence this year of Shavuot falling during Jewish American Heritage Month (inaugurated on the 350th anniversary of Jews arriving in New Amsterdam) — because the classic Shavuot cheesecake is actually an American invention. You know the one — smooth, dense, a light tang and absolutely decadent. A first bite that, like Proust’s Madeleines, is transportive. 

According to Rabbi Sam Spector of Congregation Kol Ami in Salt Lake City, Jews and Latter-day Saints have a lot in common. Brigham Young, who pioneered the move of Mormons to Utah, is often referred to by his followers as America’s Moses. He led his followers “across the Mississippi, across the wilderness, and settled in a promised land that had America’s Dead Sea.” He called it Zion.