World News
-
Beatrice Weber, 48, Yaffed executive director
Beatrice Weber, 48, is the executive director of Yaffed, whose mission is to improve the quality of secular education in New York’s Hasidic and haredi yeshivas. A speaker, activist and writer raised in the haredi Orthodox community in Toronto, and a board member of Right to Parent, she is the first person to successfully sue…
-
Rachael Fried, 36, Jewish Queer Youth executive director
Rachael Fried, 36, is the executive director of Jewish Queer Youth, a nonprofit that supports and empowers LGBTQ youth with a focus on those from Orthodox, Hasidic and Sephardic/Mizrahi homes. Under Fried’s leadership, the formerly volunteer-run organization has grown to a professional one with a team of seven salaried employees, a drop-in center in Times…
-
Barry Manilow, 79, hitmaker with Broadway-bound show
For the full list of this year’s 36 to Watch — which honors leaders, entrepreneurs and changemakers who are making a difference in New York’s Jewish community — click here. It’s not as if people haven’t been watching Barry Manilow for over five decades now, starting in the 1970s when he recorded the first of…
-
Mattie Kahn, 31, writer
Mattie Kahn, 31, is a writer whose work has been published in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Vogue, Elle, Glamour and more. She’s won two Front Page Awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York, most recently for her feature in the Atlantic on Arthur Kahn, the first Jewish person killed…
-
A fashion show in Tribeca attempts to capture ‘The Jewish Uniform’
(New York Jewish Week) – Hip-hop music blasted through loudspeakers as about a dozen models strutted up and down a makeshift runway. Some of them wore cream knit loungewear, while others were clad in modest but elegant dresses accessorized with silk scarves. The models, many of them student volunteers from Chelsea’s Fashion Institute of Technology,…
-
Israel to invest $40 million in North American Jewish day schools
(JTA) — Citing “a major crisis in Jewish education,” Israel’s Diaspora ministry plans to pour about $40 million into training educators at Jewish schools in the United States and Canada. Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister of Diaspora affairs, announced the initiative, called “Aleph Bet” after the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, on Monday. He…
-
Mira Rivera, 58, pathbreaking rabbi
Rabbi Mira Rivera grew up in the Philippines under the care of her maternal grandmother. After a career dancing with the Martha Graham Dance Company, she became the first Filipina-American to be ordained at The Jewish Theological Seminary. After four years at Romemu, a popular Jewish Renewal congregation on New York’s Upper West Side, Rivera…
-
Suzette Sheft, 17, novelist who told her survivor grandmother’s story
At 16, Manhattanite Suzette Sheft published her first novel, “Running for Shelter: A True Story,” a retelling of her grandmother’s Holocaust survival story. Her father’s untimely death motivated Sheft to write the book: “His passing exemplified to me the importance of recording our loved one’s stories before it is too late,” she tells the New…
-
Modi Rosenfeld, 53, comedian and actor
Modi Rosenfeld is a stand-up comedian and actor who performs Jewish comedy around the world. Along with Dani Zoldan, he is a co-founder of the Chosen Comedy Festival, a celebration of Jewish humor and music that made its debut in Coney Island, Brooklyn, last summer. “I do comedy for Jews, but also when there are…
-
Susan Korn, 37, designer and creative director
Susan Korn is the 37-year-old founder, CEO and creative director of Susan Alexandra, a NYC-based brand focused on jewelry, accessories, homewares and more. In recent years, Korn’s whimsical, colorful designs have recently branched out into colorful, modern Judaica collections focused on Hanukkah, Shabbat and Passover. In addition, Korn hosts Jewish holiday-themed events at her Lower…
