By Gal Beckerman
The collapse a year ago of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, in which Hadassah had invested $40 million and assumed it had $90 million to withdraw, was actually the second blow to an organization dependent on donations for its survival. The global financial crisis was the first and more significant.
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By Beth Schwartzapfel
When the international advocacy and fundraising organization Susan G. Komen for the Cure called two Israeli advocates to invite them to a breast cancer conference in Egypt, “we were very excited about it,” one of the women said. “This is a level we never dreamed of, breaking political barriers. This collaborative effort with Middle East women dealing with the same issues we are. This holds us together, this universal experience.”Read More
By Allison Gaudet Yarrow
After her historic ordination and the swarm of press coverage it triggered, mainstream Judaism’s first black woman rabbi, Alysa Stanton, settles into her new role, leading a small congregation in Greenville, N.C
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By Beth Schwartzapfel
Concerned about the impact of unnatural beauty products on women’s health and the environment 18-year-old Erin Schrode, left, founded the conscious makeup line, Teens Turning Green, now sold at Whole Foods. Her efforts won her a Diller Tikkun Olam Award for teen philanthropists.
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By Jane Eisner and Devra Ferst
Despite notable gains for women in the past year, a Forward survey of 75 major American Jewish communal organizations found that fewer than one in six are run by women, and those women are paid 61 cents to every dollar earned by male leaders.
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By Kenneth Stern
One of the perks of fighting antisemitism for a living is the occasional opportunity to meet a genuine hero. On September 12, one of those heroes — a largely unsung one — died at age 53, alone in a motel room in Santa Fe, N.M., after a long battle with Crohn’s disease that had left her destitute.
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By Gabrielle Birkner
Women make up about three-quarters of the Jewish communal work force, but few Jewish organizations have formal policies that guarantee access to paid maternity leave and flexible work arrangements — and fewer still offer paid paternity leave.
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By Elyssa Joy Auster
Or Hatzafon, a Reform synagogue in Fairbanks, Alaska, receives visitors from far and wide. Elyssa Joy Auster, the acting rabbi, relates what happens when wandering Israelis drop by North America’s northernmost shul
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By Gal Beckerman
This school year, Maureen Campbell, a Jamaican-American woman, will be fulfilling the tricky role of principal of New York City’s first Hebrew-language charter school.
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By Michael Isaacson
Cantor Faith Steinsnyder fell in love with the music of prayer at a young age, but she quickly came to understand that this music was composed by men for men. Quietly, but dramatically, she is challenging the American perception of female cantors.
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