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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

National

Lawmakers' Tour of Israel Covers Ground, and Facts on the Ground

By:

Bryan Schwartzman

While in the midst of a campaign two years ago, State Sen. Kim Ward, a freshman Republican lawmaker from Westmoreland County in southwest Pennsylvania, received some startling news from her dying father. Ward said that her father, Roger Renko, though hooked up to a ventilator and unable to speak, scrawled on a piece of paper that his paternal grandparents had...

Local

Worries Abound on Labor Front: Will Longtime Group Survive?

By:

Bryan Schwartzman

For more than 70 years, the Jewish Labor Committee has had a presence in Philadelphia. But there's a real chance that the local office could close up shop before Labor Day of next year, according to the organization's leaders. While a number of long-term factors have contributed to the JLC's struggles -- chief among them the steady decline of the...

National

Sestak-Toomey Race: Reflection of U.S. Mood?

By:

Bryan Schwartzman

As the national focus intensifies on the Pennsylvania Senate race -- a polarizing and bare-knuckle contest that many are calling a bellwether for the national mood -- several groups are continuing to hammer U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, the Democratic hopeful, over his record on Israel. For his part, Sestak has ceaselessly pressed his case in local Jewish circles. More than...

Local

Israelis Find Philly Lessons

By:

Bryan Schwartzman

Shir Ben-Gigi doesn't mind that the only thing most people seem to know about her hometown of Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev -- if they know anything at all -- is that it overlooks a giant crater. The 25-year-old offspring of Moroccan immigrants to Israel acknowledged that, apart from that natural wonder, there's really not much reason to go there...

Education

Arab Students Meet Jews and Judaism Head On

By:

Bryan Schwartzman

Dressed in a hijab, Sarah Shiha, a 22-year-old Egyptian who hopes to one day preach the Koran on the airwaves, declares a desire to study Torah. But before her recent visit to Philadelphia, she'd never even met a Jew. Now, after participating in a five-week seminar on democracy and religious pluralism for students from the Arab world that included several...