Search results for: Rettig Gur Haviv

Haviv Rettig Gur writes about how the latest community study of New York Jewry, by the UJA-Federation of New York has broken new ground in the complicated art of studying American Jews. By sampling an unprecedented 6,000 households, asking new kinds of questions about religious practice, and focusing on areas with low rates of affiliation alongside the more concentrated Jewish communities, the study has for the first time offered local Jewish organizations and community planners new tools for tackling questions of identity, engagement, poverty and education.

Haviv Rettig Gur writes in a Jerusalem Post exclusive: After spending tens of millions of dollars in recent years to bring college-age Jewish youth on subsidized trips to Israel, the government and Jewish Agency are launching a major new effort to offer similar funding for high-schoolers. In recent days, the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry and the Jewish Agency have offered $2m. to the Lapid organization, an umbrella body of 27 trip providers for high school-age kids, to start a pilot funding mechanism that will offer financial assistance to Diaspora youth applying to Israel programs.

A new umbrella group, Lapid Israel, formed in 2008, aims to bring a high level of organization, publicity and public funding to bringing younger Diaspora Jews - those still in high school - on educational trips to Israel. The 24 organizations represented by Lapid bring some 15,000 high-school-age Jewish youths to Israel on formal programs each year. Lapid aims to become as successful as its best-known cousins, Birthright-Israel – Taglit, and MASA, private initiatives funded jointly by Israel, philanthropists, the Jewish Agency and others.

In cooperation with the Turkish government, the Izmir municipality and the local Jewish community, a group of donors and academics from Israel are working to restore the largest of the collapsed synagogue complexes of the ancient Jewish community of Izmir. They hope to fashion a 'living Jewish museum' on the spot that will teach the local Muslim population and the international academic community about Izmir's Jewish past.