by | Dec 4, 2024 2:39 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel photo
Panelists Rev. Dr. Dan Heischman, Valerie Mara, and Salman Hamid.
Here’s a hypothetical: You’re a teacher thrown into a class mid-semester and you have to choose in those first high-anxiety days between prioritizing learning a curriculum utterly new to you or learning the (yipes!) 27 students’ names.
What to do?
by | Nov 15, 2024 11:12 am | Comments (6)
Nathaniel Rosenberg photo
Church Trustee Lee and Pastor Hardy talk up elevator benefits.
A second-floor meeting room at City Hall was temporarily transformed into a standing-room-only celebration of a religious community — as parishioners of St. Matthew’s Unison Free Will Baptist Church turned out in force to support adding an elevator to make their sanctuary more accessible for the elderly and disabled.
by | Nov 8, 2024 3:59 pm | Comments (18)
Thomas Breen photo
Varick Church: So long, 242 Dixwell?
A historic Black church that has spent the past century-plus in the heart of Dixwell is considering relocating — amid a broader building up of the neighborhood’s commercial corridor.
Continue reading ‘Dixwell's Varick Church Eyes Potential Move’
by | Oct 16, 2024 11:55 am | Comments (5)
Maya McFadden photos
Alder Furlow (right) prays with Eugenia Morris and her family, during Church at the Shack.
Maya McFadden Photo
At Sunday's service.
Live music, prayer, and reminders from two alders that change is possible uplifted dozens of West Hills neighbors during a gathering of “Church at the Shack.”
by | Aug 27, 2024 1:10 pm | Comments (12)
Thomas Breen photo
So long, 949 Whalley's western addition?
The Church of Scientology has paid local taxes for the first time in 14 years for a vacant former furniture store in Westville Village — and is now looking to demolish part of that neglected property as part of a long-delayed renovation.
Continue reading ‘Scientologists Pay Taxes, Ready Partial Demolition’
by | Aug 14, 2024 11:33 am | Comments (6)
Eleanor Polak photos
Statue of Bl. Michael McGivney outside St. Mary.
Father Joseph McNeill and altar boys at Tuesday's "feast day."
Outside the St. Mary Church at 5 Hillhouse Ave. stands a life-sized statue of the Blessed Michael McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus and the patron of that parish. The sculpture has its arms outstretched, as if embracing everyone who enters the church, welcoming them in.
Continue reading ‘St. Mary Pays Tribute To Michael McGivney’
by | Jul 9, 2024 12:23 pm | Comments (21)
Thomas Breen photo
949 Whalley, meet the tax man.
(Updated) For the first time in 14 years, City Hall has sent a property tax bill to the Church of Scientology for a long-vacant former furniture store in Westville Village.
Continue reading ‘Scientology Building's Tax Bill Comes Due’
by | Apr 30, 2024 1:49 pm | Comments (14)
Laura Glesby Photo
Megan Fountain co-leads a seder, calls for a ceasefire.
It is not enough that God took the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt, according to a group of pro-Palestine activists on Monday evening who turned a traditional Passover song on its head by singing “Lo dayeinu.”
by | Apr 19, 2024 6:32 pm | Comments (1)
Contributed photo
Rabbi Berl Levitin and Yisrael Stock outside City Hall with newly inked mayoral proclamation.
Several dozen members of New Haven’s growing Chabad Lubavitch Chasidic Orthodox Jewish community gathered outside City Hall to celebrate the anniversary of the birthday of the movement’s spiritual leader — and to receive an official mayoral proclamation honoring the day as one dedicated to learning and good deeds.
by | Mar 28, 2024 9:46 am | Comments (4)
Contributed Photo
Mending Minyan's Purim party.
This article was submitted by members of Mending Minyan.
(Opinion) The wicked prime minister Haman was hoisted by his own petard, or at least hung by his own gallows, for approximately the 2,500th straight year at Bregamos Community Theater last Friday.
Continue reading ‘Opinion: Purim Party Felt Different This Year’
by | Mar 27, 2024 4:57 pm | Comments (3)
Bridging generations, backgrounds: Rabbi Benjamin Scolnic, Council member Abdul Razak Osmanu.
One night the town erupted in chanting and screaming and accusation. Then a conversation started.
Continue reading ‘Rabbi, Pro-Ceasefire Council Member Seek Common Ground’
by | Mar 19, 2024 9:22 am | Comments (2)
Chris Volpe Photos
Junior Aedan Heffernan (pictured) led a gathering honoring the Stations of the Cross for Lent across the Albertus Magnus campus Monday in New Haven.
Continue reading ‘Lent March Message: "Be Peace, Live Peace"’
by | Mar 8, 2024 2:28 pm | Comments (42)
Paul Bass Photos
No sign of "religious" activity: Assessor Pullen (left); portions of the blighted Scientology building.
Scientologists will have to pay taxes after sitting on plans to resurrect Ron Hubbard’s spirit inside the deteriorating doors of a former furniture store — now that the city revoked the church’s tax-exempt status.
Continue reading ‘Blighted Scientology Building Returned To Tax Rolls’
by | Mar 5, 2024 2:14 pm | Comments (5)
Thomas Breen Photo
Bishop Barber at NXTHVN: Poverty "preventable, avoidable, unnecessary."
How do you reconcile a moral crisis of loneliness with the economic toll of a stagnant minimum wage, and then reach “a more perfect union?”
Bishop William J. Barber II charted that path in a Dixwell sermon Tuesday that touched on biblical scripture, the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., the good deeds of his grandmother, the precariousness of swing-state voter turnout, and the fatal cruelty of poverty.
Continue reading ‘Barber's Loneliness RX: Start With Poverty’
by | Feb 29, 2024 11:50 am | Comments (4)
The life and work of Laurel Fox Vlock (pictured), a TV journalist who founded New Haven’s Holocaust video archives, will take center stage at an event Sunday. Hosted by the Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven, the event — the second annual Judith Ann Schiff Women’s History Program — begins at the New Haven Museum (114 Whitney Ave.) at 2 p.m. Click here for more details. Read on to learn how Vlock’s work broke new ground and resonates more than ever today.
Continue reading ‘How Laurel Vlock Documented The Unthinkable’
by | Feb 19, 2024 1:09 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Steve Harvin with his friend Rev. John Cotten at Sunday's event.
The same God that protected Steve Harvin in combat in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, as a soldier with the 75th Army Ranger Regiment, is continuing to protect — and heal — him in an ongoing battle with cancer.
Sunday evening Harvin raised his hand in praise, along with more than a dozen other cancer survivors in a moving, music and prayer-filled celebration inside a New Haven church billed as “Faith Over Cancer.”
by | Jan 15, 2024 3:24 pm | Comments (26)
Jamil Ragland Photo
At the MLK Love March Monday in the Goatville neighborhood.
As a practicing agnostic, I’ve often wondered why the Civil Rights Movement began in the church. Christianity has always seemed antithetical to Black liberation to me. After all, this is the white man’s religion, with a white Jesus foisted upon our people during the degradation of slavery. I’ve resented my people’s devotion to a God we wouldn’t even know if not for our conquest.
This question was cycling through my mind when I stepped off with the members and supporters of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church for their 54th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Love March through the streets of East Rock, the state’s longest-running celebration of Dr. King’s life and achievements.
Continue reading ‘Love March Sparks Civil Rights Revelation’
by | Jan 5, 2024 9:04 am | Comments (1)
The New Haven-based bomba group Proyecto Cimarrón was already laying down traditional Puerto Rican rhythms in Keefe Community Center on Pine Street in Hamden, when families streamed into the room, ready to take part in the town’s first official celebration of Three Kings Day on Thursday evening.
by | Jan 1, 2024 5:46 pm | Comments (3)
Dereen Shirnekhi Photo
Pastor Valerie Washington, Imam Omer Bajwa, and Rabbi Eric Woodward after speaking at the inauguration.
Rabbi Eric Woodward and Imam Omer Bajwa didn’t compare notes before giving back-to-back invocations at Monday’s mayoral inauguration. They didn’t need to — they knew what to say. And they had similar messages to impart.
Continue reading ‘At Inauguration, Imam & Rabbi Pray For Justice’
by | Dec 20, 2023 8:24 am | Comments (6)
Allan Appel photo
Mother Helen Carr (center) with Babatunde Akinjobi and Marcus Harvin.
Marcus Harvin is working on a fresh start: for the food in his home community of Newhallville, and for formerly incarcerated people like himself who are looking to improve their own lives and the lives of those around them.
Enter Newhallville Fresh Start: a food pantry he’s in the process of founding to provide healthy produce and, eventually, programming for neighbors in need.
by and | Dec 11, 2023 1:09 pm | Comments (20)
Thomas Breen / Jake Dressler photos
Rabbi Gershon Borenstein on Monday: "One act of positivity will far outpace ... what one negative act can do"; a protester on Saturday, climbing the menorah with a Palestinian flag.
Elected officials and faith leaders gathered at the spot where a protester climbed a public menorah and planted a Palestinian flag — and warned that such acts, if not called out, can escalate into violent antisemitic action.
Continue reading ‘Jewish Leaders, Pols Denounce Menorah "Desecration"’
by | Dec 8, 2023 1:56 pm | Comments (2)
Allan Appel photo
On Thursday just after the sun went down, the first night of Hanukkah, Eric Notkin decided to come to his first ever menorah lighting on the Green simply to show solidarity at a time of rising anti-Semitism — occasioned in no small part by the violent reverberations of the Israel-Hamas war.
Continue reading ‘Menorah Lighting On The Green Ushers In First Night Of Hanukkah’
by | Nov 13, 2023 9:05 am | Comments (1)
Christopher Wigren, Stacy and Frankie Vairo, Jane Montanaro, Lady Shalene McClam, Pastor Darrell McClam, and Mother Helen Jean Carr on Sunday.
The congregants of Pitts Chapel United Free Will Baptist Church are not only raising their historic sanctuary’s roof in dancing, singing, and exuberant prayer as they do every Sunday — now they are also able to fix it.
Continue reading ‘Newhallville Church's Roof Repairs Celebrated’
by | Nov 6, 2023 8:42 am | Comments (0)
Allan Appel photo
Professor Schmidt with Edward Dunar, head of Albertus's Eckhart Center.
Ever have a long email exchange end in a sudden stoppage? You send a heartfelt one and there is no answer. Nothing. Nada. An empty slot on the screen. Well, maybe that feeling of sudden absence after an enveloping “presence” of the Other might not be altogether unlike the way Adam and Eve felt when God cut off their account and expelled them from the Garden of Eden.
Continue reading ‘God & The Internet Meet At Albertus Magnus’
by | Oct 20, 2023 10:55 am | Comments (1)
Gary Drucker Photo
Robyn Teplitzky, MSW, Honoree of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven
This write-up was submitted by Jewish Historical Society President Michael Dimenstein.
Last Sunday, more than 200 members and friends of the Jewish community gathered to recognize Robyn Teplitzky’s four decades of leadership, advocacy, and service to a host of local organizations and agencies. Following an intense week that included violence in Israel and multiple bomb threats against Jewish institutions, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven’s Annual Award Celebration provided an opportunity for the community to gather in solidarity and support, and perhaps for a temporary antidote to the pain and grief.
Continue reading ‘Jewish Historical Society Honors Career Of Community Service’