Earth Day screening of anti-fracking film

by Jill Garbi

May 7, 2012

It was probably no coincidence that organizers at Monmouth Reform Temple chose April 22 as the day to screen the Emmy Award-winning documentary Gasland. The aim of the program was to raise awareness of a controversial practice that, critics claim, puts water sources and public health at risk, and that Sunday was Earth Day. Read More

Students go from somber memorial to celebration

by NJJN Staff

May 7, 2012

In less than two hours, Hillel Yeshiva High School students experienced the abrupt shift between the somber mood of Yom Hazikaron and the festive celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut. Read More

Survivors meet to lunch, learn in new program

by Jill Garbi

May 7, 2012

At the first in a new monthly congregate meal program for Holocaust survivors, the 24 seniors who gathered April 25 at a Marlboro synagogue learned that Judaism encourages “a positive outlook on life.” Sponsored by Jewish Family & Children’s Service of Greater Monmouth County, the Kosher Meals-on-Wheels “lunch and learn” program offers the elderly survivors a chance to socialize with one another and feel comfortable sharing their experiences. Read More

Author limns American blindness to Hitler’s rise

by Alan Richman

April 23, 2012

Oddly, an American-born woman, the daughter of a prominent Boston family, apparently saved Adolf Hitler’s life twice and indirectly opened a door to Nazi rule in Germany, World War II, and the Holocaust. Read More

Son of Bielski brother shares family legacy

Heroism during Shoa highlighted at Brookdale event

by Jill Garbi

April 23, 2012

When Sonia Bielski turned 90 on April 15, she received nearly 50 calls from well-wishers around the globe who said they owed their lives to her late husband, Alexander (“Zus”), and his brothers. The Bielski brothers led a Jewish resistance effort during the Holocaust, rescuing more than 1,200 men, women, and children by offering protection within the forests of Poland. Their heroic acts were depicted in the 2008 film Defiance. Read More

Best-selling writer puts Shoa at center of new book

by Debra Rubin

April 23, 2012

As a young journalist on Fleet Street in 1960, Barbara Taylor Bradford became fascinated with the capture of Nazi mastermind Adolph Eichmann and his trial and execution in Israel. “When he was tried, the British press very much covered it,” recalled Bradford, whose first novel, A Woman of Substance, sold 31 million copies. Twenty-six novels later, the best-selling British author uses the backdrop of the Holocaust to tell of the struggles of a 14-year-old Jewish girl left to survive on her own in 1938 Nazi Germany. Read More

Federation sends $390K to meet needs in Israel

Funds help at-risk, special-needs youth; terror survivors

by Jill Garbi

April 10, 2012

In a “less is more” approach designed to increase the impact on its beneficiary Israeli agencies, the Jewish Federation of Monmouth County awarded $390,228 to organizations that serve immigrants, orphans, at-risk youth, victims of terror, and Holocaust survivors in the Jewish state. Read More

If it’s Friday, it must be time for a Chabad visit

by Jill Garbi

April 10, 2012

Every Friday morning, carloads of rabbinic students from Chabad of Western Monmouth County hit the shopping plazas along Route 9 in Manalapan, Marlboro, and Freehold. It’s not good deals the young men are in search of — it’s good deeds. Read More

Five generations of a family bound in commitment

by Debra Rubin

April 10, 2012

Four generations of a family devoted to Hadassah — and whose connection stretches back to a fifth generation — gathered in Monroe to celebrate the Zionist organization’s 100th anniversary. Read More