ShutterstockCombatting Antisemitism at the National and Member Level Hadassah is redoubling its efforts to counter the alarming rise in antisemitism post-October 7. The organization is working with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to advance legislation to fund civil rights enforcement, define antisemitism at the Department of Education, establish a national coordinator to counter antisemitism in the White House and bolster Holocaust education in public schools across the country. At the same time, Hadassah leaders continue to speak out against antisemitism displayed by the Unite ..read more

(Left to right) Track and field athletes; Gal Fridman winning gold in 2004. PA Images/Alamy; Zacharia Ofri in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. The Olympic Summer Games in Paris will occupy the world’s airwaves from July 26 to August 11. Israel will be among the 206 countries competing for gold, silver and bronze medals. While most of us know Israel’s tragic history at the Olympics—six coaches and five athletes were murdered by terrorists at the 1972 games in Munich—how many of us recall the Jewish state’s history and successes at the Olympics? 1. Israel’s National Olympics Committee was formed in 1 ..read more

Mother and newborn at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus. Courtesy of HMO Last summer, midwife Efrat Dolinsky gave birth to her son, Carmi, at the same place where she regularly helps deliver other women’s babies: the Rady Mother and Child Center at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus. “All my babies were born at Hadassah,” said the 33-year-old mother of four. Carmi, however, was the first born after she became a midwife. “I arrived as the night shift was ending. My supervisor, midwife Aviah Yagel, was about to go off duty, but she stayed to deliver me. Suddenly, I was getting what I try to give: care ..read more

Sefira Lightstone I almost never tell anyone that I’m a lady who wraps, which is to say, that I’ve been binding myself in prayer every morning for nearly a dozen years. When I mention tefillin outside Jewish circles, and sometimes even within them, a surprising number have no idea what I’m talking about. The mention of leather straps can elicit wide-eyed stares, as if I’m describing a form of religious kink. Tefillin, a pair of little black boxes containing Hebrew parchment scrolls that are attached to the forehead and arm by leather straps, are mentioned four times in the Torah, including in De ..read more

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“To be a Jewish woman is not to accept defeat.” —The Boy with the Star Tattoo Israeli-born master storyteller Talia Carner’s new historical fiction, The Boy with the Star Tattoo, is set largely in France and weaves together three stories set in different times. There is  a Holocaust-era tale of a disabled young pregnant French women, the search for Jewish orphans hidden in Christian homes by Youth Aliyah immediately after the Holocaust and the daring Cherbourg Project, a clandestine 1960s Israeli mission to recover ships commissioned by Israel and held up by a French arms embargo. The te ..read more

Images courtesy of Cohen Media Group Jake Paltrow’s latest film, June Zero, has an unlikely but fascinating origin story. The idea, said the director, “grew out of [my] learning the fact that only Mizrahi officers were allowed to guard Eichmann and the unusual detail that in a culture and religion with no cremation, an official decision was made to incinerate Eichmann’s body after he was hanged. “Both seemed like very compelling places to start from,” he added. The result is indeed a compelling anthology of three distinct yet interconnected short films related to the captivity, trial and death ..read more

Actress Jessica Hecht engages with the children at the Palorinya Refugee Settlement in Uganda. All images in Uganda Shachar May/IsraAID  When Jessica Hecht, the two-time Tony nominated actress, played Golde in Fiddler on the Roof  back in 2016, she never imagined that portraying the plight of the iconic matriarch would spark a vision to bring social and emotional healing to young people from Anatevkas across the globe.  But eight years later, after journeys to Greece, Moldova and Uganda, Hecht was back in Manhattan in early July with The Campfire Project, her initiative that tends to ..read more

Hadassah National President Carol Ann Schwartz Summer is supposed to be a time to relax, but for Israel and the Jewish world, this is a year with no summer break. Our calendars are stuck. Even if we could get beyond the horror and tragedy of October 7, 2023, we are in a perpetual state of mobilization and a seemingly endless struggle. Far from the combat zones, Israel’s legitimacy is questioned more widely than ever, and it’s clear that the war with Hamas provides an excuse for people who believe the Jewish state’s illegitimacy goes back to its founding. For many, the central issue is Zionism ..read more

Sheryl Sandberg and Amit Soussana listen to Vice President Kamala Harris before watching ‘Screams Before Silence’ at a June 17 White House event. AP Photo/Susan Walsh On June 18, a day before the United Nations marked its annual International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, 54 American and international organizations sent a strongly worded letter to António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, urging him “once again, to publicly condemn Hamas for their weaponization of sexual violence against Israeli women and girls on October 7 and beyond. “There is abund ..read more