Almost exactly a year ago, Fair Lawn resident Anna Olswanger was watching the movie “Julie & Julia” when a scene from the film hit so close to home it took her aback.

Olswanger — author, literary agent, and creator of the new website Yerusha, inheritance — described her feelings as she watched actress Meryl Streep, playing Julia Child, read a letter from her sister.

“When she came to the part where her sister said she was pregnant, Julia began to cry, painfully,” Olswanger recalled. “Her husband moved over to her. Julia, through her crying, said, ‘I’m so happy,’ and her husband answered, ‘I know.’ Of course,” said Olswanger, “both he and the audience knew that she was not crying from happiness for her sister, but from her own grief of not having children.”

This Rosh HaShanah, worshippers in Conservative congregations across North America will find themselves using a new machzor.

More than 150,000 copies of the High Holidays prayer book, Mahzor Lev Shalem, have been pre-sold, representing orders from nearly 130 of some 650 affiliated congregations.

The strong interest might stem from “dissatisfaction with all previous machzors,” said Rabbi Stuart Kelman of Berkeley, Calif., a member of the committee that produced the prayer book.

Lev Shalem in one sense is a response to two oft-heard criticisms of the Conservative movement: that it is too elitist and too intellectual.

Her marriage of 18 years was marked by severe spousal abuse and ended in 2005 with a civil divorce.

But in the eyes of rabbinic authorities, the 44-year-old former Silver Spring, Md., woman remains married because her husband has refused to grant her a Jewish divorce by giving her a document called a get.

Known as an agunah, or a chained woman, she has been unable to start a new life. She has suffered financially and emotionally as a result; so have her five children.

JERUSALEM – A standoff between the Israeli government and an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev Desert is raising tensions over land rights in southern Israel.

Village residents are rebuilding their homes for the third time in as many weeks after their demolition Tuesday by Israeli authorities.

In the first demolition order carried out July 27, some 1,300 police escorted Israel Lands Administration officials into the unofficial village of Al-Arakib before dawn, removing the area’s 300 residents before razing 45 structures, including homes and chicken coops. Residents rebuilt their homes and the police returned — twice.

The government says the Bedouin are occupying the land illegally; the Bedouin refused the government’s offer to let them stay as renters.

The philanthropic world got a happy jolt when 40 members of the world’s wealthy elite — including 13 Jews — announced that they would give away more than half their money before they died.

The participating philanthropists were responding last week to a challenge issued earlier this year by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to their billionaire peers to donate more than half of their wealth in their lifetimes. Buffett and Gates called it the Giving Pledge.

But without any obvious signs of where their money will go, it’s unclear what impact this will have on Jewish nonprofits.

This is what we know so far about the Jewish giving of the Jews who have accepted the Giving Pledge, according to searches of their foundations’ 990 tax forms and media reports:

Michael Bloomberg: Already one of the world’s most generous givers, the mayor of New York City has been ramping up his charity in recent years. His foundation does not yet have 990 forms that show where his money is going, but according to a New York magazine profile he is a major donor to New York’s Jewish Museum.

“Being charitable is an important part of Jewish identity,” Joan Rosenbaum, director of the museum, told the magazine. “And Michael has been an extraordinarily generous supporter of the museum since 1988.”

JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told a public inquiry into the deadly, late May raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla that he left the matter in the hands of his defense minister and military leaders.

“We did not delve deeply into the details of the operation, except for the ramifications it may have in the media,” Netanyahu told the Israeli commission in reference to the decision making process prior to the May 31 raid that left nine Turkish activists dead.

The Israeli premier, who agreed to testify before the commission only after its chairman former Israeli supreme court judge Jacob Turkel threatened to quit, was visiting Canada at the time of the raid, which led to a diplomatic disaster for Israel.

Area teens heading to college may encounter anti-Israel and anti-Semitic attitudes and behavior there — and educators and youth leaders have ways to manage an often overwhelming experience.

“For freshman going to college, it can be a very surprising experience, especially if you come from a tight-knit Jewish community, or a Jewish school,” says Andrew Getraer, the executive director of Rutgers University Hillel in New Brunswick. “Most high school students have never had to deal with such a variety of opinions and events, especially ones that may directly challenge their own.”