Adversaries offer alternate postmortems on how, why it came to be. By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer The Pentagon has a new policy for handling religious freedom complaints: objections to specific displays or expressions will automatically go up the chain of command to the Department of Defense and must

By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer Dennis Day remembers that when he started as a custodian at Beth Abraham Synagogue, every one of its 600-plus seats was full on the High Holidays. That included the bleachers he set up in the social hall balcony, overlooking the back of the

By Alix Wall, forward.com To some, orecchiette is just a pasta shape. To Benedetta Jasmine Guetta, it’s infuriating. “The history of orecchiette literally enrages me,” she said of the pasta whose name translates as “little ears.” Italians tell her the pasta shape comes from the Puglia region, unaware that it

By Dan Friedman, forward.com Only four Jews, out of the millions who were transported to the Nazi killing camp at Oświęcim in occupied Poland, managed to escape. Jonathan Freedland’s The Escape Artist (Harper) aims to tell the now relatively unknown story of how, in April 1944 — after around 1.75

By Ari L. Noonan, Jewish Journal Simon Wiesenthal — history’s most successful pursuer of Nazis, who brought almost 1,100 criminals to justice — lives again in playwright and actor Tom Dugan’s talented hands. Dugan has been performing his one-person play, Wiesenthal, around the world since 2009. And in 2021, he

By Kylie Ora Lobell, jewishjournal.com There have been plenty of books written about Zionism and its early founders and builders, like Theodor Herzl, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Golda Meir and Louis D. Brandeis. While many of these works are compelling and help readers learn more about the history of the Jewish state,

Judaism’s Worldview Series Jewish Family Education with Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer Salonika, Greece, 1936. The people in Nico’s Jewish neighborhood called the little blond-haired blue-eyed boy Chioni, Greek for snow, because he never lied. He adored his grandfather, who once warned him about lies. “Sometimes, if you

By Sam Fisher, cincyjewfolk.com With an overflow crowd of more than 250 people packed into a Cincinnati City Council public forum on Feb. 14, Mayor Aftab Pureval said he did not believe the city should take up the cease-fire resolution many in attendance were calling for. A standing-room crowd spilled

A crunchy, rolled treat from Greek and Turkish Jewish tradition. By Vered Guttman, The Nosher Jews around the Diaspora always let their imagination soar when it came to Purim revenge-food. Greek and Turkish Jews adapted the Middle Eastern sweet phyllo “cigars” and named them after Haman’s fingers. In this sweet

Look for The Adventures of Bark Mitzvah Boy each month in The Dayton Jewish Observer and at this site!     To read the complete March 2024 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.