( JTA) — As the sun set on Feb. 5, signaling the start of Tu Bishvat, a group of Jews carried shovels into the South River Forest southeast of downtown Atlanta. In the day’s declining light, they planted saplings — seven paw paws, three fig and two peach — to…

Is there really a crisis between Israel and American Jewry? The headlines and the op-ed’s, particularly in Jewish media, say there is. When big money American donors — the kind whose checks, in increments of $18, come in six digits or more- publicly, politely caution the Israeli government as it…

Paige Alexander first met Jimmy Carter on a cold day in December 1979 as the president welcomed British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to the White House. The 13-year-old Alexander was visiting Washington, D.C., with her mother, Elaine. A Georgian working in the White House protocol office arranged for the Jewish…

I doubt that the people flinging baggies containing anti-Jewish flyers onto driveways and lawns in Dunwoody and Sandy Springs before the sun rose on Feb. 5 knew who lived in those homes. In the darkness they could not know whether the people asleep at that hour were or were not…

On Monday morning, even before the prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, a stern-sounding speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives addressed what he termed “a repulsive incident” over the weekend — the distribution of antisemitic flyers in the driveways of homes in Dunwoody and Sandy Springs. “Saturday night, under…

At the conclusion of a three-hour hearing that touched on legal and legislative fine points and featured impassioned testimony, the Georgia House Judiciary Committee decided Jan. 31 that it needed more time to consider how to define antisemitism in the state legal code. Legislation designated as House Bill 30 would…

In the early 1980s, my father flew to Atlanta to meet with CNN executives about a possible collaboration between the network and magazines he published in the hospital and health care field. Nothing came of those conversations, but afterward he wrote me a letter, saying how impressed he was by…

Rabbi Larry Sernovitz is looking forward to the trip that Temple Kol Emeth members will make in May to celebrate Israel’s 75th anniversary and mark the Marietta congregation’s 40th. His plans include a reunion with a rabbinical school classmate, Gilad Kariv, a member of the Labor Party and the first…

Standing in front of her grave, my wife’s brother reminded us that the woman we knew as a mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, wife, sister, and friend had been taken from us years ago by the disease that extinguished her vibrant, energetic, and loving presence. Death freed her from the mental and…