2015 Battered Mothers Custody Conference (BMCC) keynote speaker, Dr. Amy Neustein shares her story, transforming her personal tragedy into political activism and scholarly writing.
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Sheryl Slonim, DNP (Doctor of Nursing Practice), named one of NJ’s 2015 Best 50 Women in Business
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In Israel, the so-called “Conversion Law,” a bill that would allow local rabbis, rather than only members of the Chief Rabbinate, to initiate and complete the conversion process, is on the table in the negotiations to form a new government. Some say the bill represents a necessary reorganization of the bureaucracy that currently controls the conversion process in Israel. Others believe that, even though it stipulates that the Chief Rabbinate must give final approval, the new law would still “water down” the process. On The Jewish Voice’s Facebook website, the question last month was: Do you favor the conversion bill? I favor it, because no one has the moral or ethical right to coerce another to abide by anyone else’s religious dictates. If a person decides to follow Judaism, that is a private...
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Professor Danusha V. Goska, an author and member of the Polish-American community who writes “Bieganski the Blog,” sees a double standard in the way her Congressman, Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), handles charges of antisemitism. When it was revealed last month that a Polish-American he was endorsing for a memorial was a known antisemite, Mr. Pascrell withdrew his support. But when two members of the large Arab-American community in Paterson, which Mr. Pascrell represents as well, engaged in public antisemitism, the congressman not only refused to distance himself from them, he would not even condemn their statements. The Polish-American in question was Chester Grabowski, the late publisher of a Clifton-based Polish-American weekly. Both of the Arab-Americans reside in Paterson. One, Dr. Aref Assaf, accused Jewish supporters of Rep Steven Rothman, Mr. Pascrell’s opponent in the June...
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Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the Republican candidate for Congress in NJ’s 9th District, faces an uphill battle to beat Democrat incumbent Bill Pascrell. But the rabbi— who is a popular author, media personality, and spiritual leader of the stars—is hoping his important new ideas will serve as planks to motivate the electorate to move him to Capitol Hill. For starters, despite his Orthodox rabbinic ordination from the Chabad Lubavitch movement, Rabbi Boteach has disassociated himself from what he calls the Republican Party’s “trifecta of abortion, contraception, and gay marriage.” The first, he said, is a result—not the cause—of cultural deterioration in the US. The second is a misunderstanding of the purposes of marital intimacy, by failure to acknowledge that such intimacy serves purposes additional to procreation. And the third is an unimportant distraction. Domestic Partnership...
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President Obama’s re-election campaign announced last month the launch of “Rabbis for Obama,” a group whose stated goal is to rally grassroots support for the President in the Jewish community. The announcement came amid reports that Jewish support for Barack Obama, while still strong, is dwindling when compared to his numbers in 2008; as well as some hard-hitting ads for GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney targeting Jewish concerns, especially regarding support for Israel. The problem for the Democrats is that more than one-third of the “Rabbis for Obama” have taken harsh left-wing, anti-Israel positions themselves that they clearly think the President also supports. This perception will not help Mr. Obama in the normative pro-Israel Jewish community. According to the Boston Globe, there is speculation that he could lose between three and 10 percentage points...
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