The Jewish Observer
News from Middle Tennessee's Jewish Community | Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025
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Newcomer Highlight April 23

April 4

Welcome to the Observer's monthly Newcomer Column! Every month, we will be featuring one of our Nashville Jewish Newcomers so you can get to know them and their dynamic, engaging stories. One of my favorite parts of my job as the Federation's Newcomer Engagement Associate is connecting with the newcomers and bringing them into Nashville's Jewish community through our Newcomer Shabbat dinners, Newcomer Welcome Receptions, and connecting them with community members and organizations who can help them feel like they belong here. We hope you enjoy reading these and give every newcomer you meet a smile and a warm Nashville welcome!

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Standing up to, and Educating About, Antisemitism

April 3

Recently, Observer editor Barbara Dab and I were interviewed by a local television station to discuss the rise in antisemitic activity locally and around the country. Dedicating an entire hour to this topic is an indication of how serious and far reaching this situation has become, and the concern it has caused not only to us in the Jewish community, but also to our friends and neighbors. When the hour program was over, we had only scratched the surface of what is happening and how we are responding.

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AKIVA AND JMS STUDENTS TAKE PART IN NATIONAL BUTTERFLY PROJECT

April 3

Students from the Jewish Middle School and Akiva School joined together in mid-March to take part in a local adaptation of The Butterfly Project, a national campaign to fuse arts education with Holocaust study as a means of cultivating empathy and social responsibility in children. The Butterfly Project began in 2006 at the San Diego Jewish Academy as a way of memorializing the 1.5 million children murdered during the Holocaust. Inspired by “I Never Saw Another Butterfly,” a collection of poems, letters, and drawings by children imprisoned at the Terezin Concentration Camp, the program hopes to have contemporary children from around the globe create and install 1.5 million ceramic butterflies in memory of those lost children.

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Editor's Note April 2023

April 3

As Passover is just days away, I want to take a few minutes and share some reflections. This year has been both challenging and rewarding in ways I could not have foreseen when we last opened our Haggadahs.

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Israel Fly-in

April 3

In Israel, Leslie Kirby, President of Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville, shares concern for divisions that judicial reform debate is causing in Israel & among Jews worldwide

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