Headlines

Local

Synagogue, Developer At Odds Over Casino

Local

Amid Brouhaha Over IRS, Z Street Gets Its Day in Court

Local

ADL Regional Head to Retire at Year’s End

Learning

Improv Duo Takes Torah for a Comic Spin

By:

Bryan Schwartzman

What would happen if two 20-something Jews were asked to entertain hundreds of restless Ramah campers for an hour on a rain-soaked summer day? As it turned out, it was something like midrash meets Monty Python, with a little bit of Mel thrown in -- Brooks, that is. That's how Andrew Davies and Aaron Friedman -- who both spent the...

Local

Special Place for Special Needs

By:

Deborah Hirsch

Once a month, Nadine Silber, her husband and two little boys drive all the way from their Bucks County home in Bristol Borough for Saturday morning services at Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia. The draw: Celebrations! -- an educational workshop tailored for children with disabilities and their families. There are closer synagogues, Silber said, but none of them has programs suitable...

Jewish Federation

A Truly Super Sunday

Give 600 people some training, sustain them with food, arm them with pledge cards and pens, then set them loose on the banks of phones at the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy. What do you get? More than 3,000 gifts totaling well over $1 million in contributions to the 2012 Jewish Federation Annual Campaign. The men, women, teens, young adults...

Film & Television

Hollywood's Big Knight Arrives

Former Bucks County resident Tom Sherak now presides over Hollywood and Oscar

By:

Michael Elkin

Bucks County's Tom Sherak -- screen saver? With Oscar putting on his top hat to top off movie awards season this Sunday night, the president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences -- formerly of Yardley -- may deserve an award himself for his picture-perfect way of handling a brouhaha over bias that had Hollywood hysterical for days...

Local

Dues for a Change

By:

Bryan Schwartzman

For the leaders of Temple Brith Achim, a 275-family Reform congregation in King of Prussia, scrapping membership dues two years ago in favor of a pay-what-you-wish approach was a bit like stepping off a cliff. But after overhauling how members fund the entire synagogue operation -- in part, by trading the word "dues" for the more altruistic-sounding term "gift" --...