Clergy and community leaders from across North Carolina will join together on Tuesday, April 12 at 2 pm online to launch the North Carolina Jewish Clergy Association (NCJCA).  This new organization of rabbis and cantors of various streams serving congregations, organizations, and the broader Jewish community of North Carolina will promote the interests of Judaism and the Jewish people in North Carolina and throughout the world, serve as a collective voice of the North Carolina Jewish clergy community with due regard for the autonomy of the individual clergy person, and support members in professional and personal growth. Congresswoman Kathy Manning and other North Carolina leaders will share words of congratulations.

The month of April is set aside each year to spread awareness about Parkinson’s, the neurodegenerative disease that affects seven to 10 million people globally. According to the Parkinson’s Foundation, about one million people in the United States are living with Parkinson’s disease, which is more than the number of people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy and Lou Gehrig’s disease combined. This number is expected to rise to 1.2 million people by 2030.

Charlotte Jewish artist and Queens University professor, Mike Wirth, has been selected to present his artwork and ideas on Jewish Futurism at the 8th biennial annual Conney Conference on Jewish Arts, part of the Conney Project on Jewish Arts now in its 17th year. The national conference will take place in Madison, Wisconsin, from March 27 to 30. Mike will be presenting alongside nationally recognized Jewish creatives, curators, and academics.

(JTA) — The Oscars went on as usual Sunday night — although you wouldn’t know it from the morning-after conversation. A violent altercation between celebrities became the most-discussed moment of the evening (more on that below), and general reviews for the show itself were dismal, full of criticism for its slapdash presentation and pre-taping of several awards categories. But there were a few Jewish moments to be had in the three-and-a-half-hour evening.

(JTA) — Israel announced plans to set up a field hospital in western Ukraine as the Russian war against the country shows no sign of abating.

Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte’s Annual Campaign is well underway with close to $1.3 million in pledges from over 500 donors as of March 15. On the heels of the Main Event, the campaign team has been busy contacting donors to explain why this year’s $5 million campaign is special and why it is so important to achieve this goal.

(JTA) — All of the posturing and fears and hypothesizing became reality early Thursday morning in Ukraine, as Russia launched a full-scale armed invasion by land and sea. Tens of thousands of Jews live in Ukraine, making it home to one of the world’s largest Jewish communities — one with a complicated history, tainted by persecution and upheaval, that is tangibly affecting their response to the attack. Here’s a breakdown of who they are, where they live and what they are experiencing.

While confronting continuous operational challenges posed by the pandemic, the Foundation of Shalom Park (FSP) spent 2021 working on an issue of equal or perhaps greater long-term importance to the campus community, namely, establishing a common understanding and practice around principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

By Amy Lefkof
By chance, Temple Beth El (TBE) member Samantha Foodman’s husband, Adam, owns a huge truck. That truck proved critical to Foodman’s induction into the world of refugee resettlement. In late fall of 2021, TBE sent out an all-points bulletin to its congregants listing various ways to help Carolina Refugee Resettlement Agency (CRRA), the local affiliate of HIAS (formerly, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), including a request for a truck to haul furniture to apartments for newly arrived Afghans. Enter Adam, Samantha, their three teenage boys, and a visiting house guest.

On December 2, 2021, for the first time in 21 months, the Levine Jewish Community Center (LJCC) Butterfly Project hosted an in-person workshop for 120 masked seventh-grade students from Weddington Middle School.