Dave Schechter

2 weeks ago | atlantajewishtimes.com | Dave Schechter

In a three-hour period on a recent Sunday afternoon, we had reason to celebrate and mourn. The original plan called for us to fly on the Saturday to Miami, where my wife would attend a Sunday “ladies lunch” for her soon-to-be 80-year-old aunt, while I hung out with her uncle, one of my favorite members of the family. But on Friday afternoon, we received a call from the son of long-time friends, informing us that his mother had succumbed to pancreatic cancer.

1 month ago | atlantajewishtimes.com | Dave Schechter

As I prepare the Haggadah for this year’s Seder — an annual cut-and-paste project that covers the basics while introducing new pages and dropping others — I’m considering Passovers past. The headline on my column a year ago read, “Leave an Empty Chair at Your Seder Table.” Below that was a sub-head that said: “Passover will not be a ‘chag sameach,’ a happy holiday, for the families of those killed on Oct.

1 month ago | atlantajewishtimes.com | Dave Schechter

Ohad Yahalomi was one of four murdered hostages whose bodies Hamas returned on Feb. 27. “It has been a devastating day,” said Danielle Kapp Cohen, a freelance writer and editor in East Cobb, who has made it her mission to support Yahalomi’s family. I wrote about Cohen’s efforts in this space last April. Through her mother’s sister, who made Aliyah 60 years ago, Cohen has three first cousins in Israel.

1 month ago | atlantajewishtimes.com | Dave Schechter

In the month since Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, he has disrupted — to the delight of supporters and the distress of opponents — how the U.S. government functions, at home and abroad. Within the torrent of executive orders that Trump has signed since Jan. 20 and the policies executed at his direction are issues of intense interest to various segments of Atlanta’s Jewish community.

1 month ago | atlantajewishtimes.com | Dave Schechter

This column was always going to break in one of two ways. Which way was uncertain until Feb. 22, when Tal Shoham came home. After 505 days as a hostage in Gaza, Tal returned to Israel, to his wife and two young children, and to an extended family whose lives have been on hold since Oct. 7, 2023.