Community News

Outgoing Federation president Robby Wax reflects on tenure

By Carl Zebrowski
Editor

When Robby Wax took over as president of the Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley in 2022, he hardly expected the world to turn upside down—again. 

The Jewish community was just beginning to rebound from the anxiety and isolation of Covid, finally gathering in…

80 years post-liberation, camp accounts lend intensity to Yom HaShoah event

By Carl Zebrowski
Editor 

Eighty years had passed since the liberation of the concentration camps when the Lehigh Valley Jewish community gathered in the JCC to remember Holocaust victims on Yom HaShoah. 

“Their stories must continue to be told not only to preserve history but to safeg…

Lipschutz granddaughter gives Yom HaShoah talk at capitol

By Carl Zebrowski
Editor

A group from the Lehigh Valley Jewish community traveled to Harrisburg on Yom HaShoah for the annual Civic Commemoration of the Holocaust at the state capitol. Leah Leisawitz, a seventh-grader who spent three years at the Jewish Day School of the Lehigh Valley durin…

Israeli ‘Idol’ winner tells 10/7 survival story at Beth El

By Carl Zebrowski
Editor

Hagit Yaso woke up early on October 7, 2023, in her home in Sderot, Israel, near the Gaza border. The weather was perfect and she headed out for a run. It was Shabbat and, as a Jew who keeps Shabbat, she didn’t take her phone. 

Yaso, a daughter of Ethiopian Jews…

Lauren Rabin to become Women’s Philanthropy president

By Carl Zebrowski
Editor

Lauren Rabin understands what it’s like to be a young mom with young kids and still want to volunteer in the community. 

Fifteen years ago she moved to the Lehigh Valley with her husband, Doron, and two young children. With no local family to help out with the k…