By J.J. Goldberg
Israel’s ministry of religious services, headed by economics minister Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home party, has created a new Jewish Identity Administration in an “effort to increase national awareness of Jewish identity,” says a
report in Yeshiva World News. Haaretz
says its job is to “instill Jewish values” in the general public. The administration will be headed by reserve Brig. Gen. Rabbi Avichai Rontzki, former chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces. Rontzki is stepping down as head of the yeshiva of Itamar, a settlement overlooking Nablus in Samaria-northern West Bank.
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By J.J. Goldberg
My
post yesterday about Jewish Los Angeles mayors before Eric Garcetti touched off a flurry of exchanges among writers and scholars who study Southern California Jewry. Among the questions raised were whether Abel Stearns’ serving as
alcalde (Spanish for mayor) of el Pueblo de Los Angeles in 1850 counts as being a mayor of a city and whether Bernard Cohn’s two-week service as acting mayor in late 1878 counts as having been elected mayor. Probably the most important, however, is whether Abel Stearns, whom I described as the first Jewish mayor of L.A., was in fact Jewish.
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By J.J. Goldberg
As they used to say at the old Yiddish Forward,
hold the back page!Read More
By J.J. Goldberg
What do we know about the tornado that hit the Oklahoma City suburbs on Monday? And what can we learn from it? Specifically, how bad was it? How does it compare with other tornadoes? And was it related to climate change, as Democratic Senators
Sheldon Whitehouse and
Barbara Boxer are charging?
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By J.J. Goldberg
If you don’t follow Philologos, the Forward’s inimitable language columnist, you’re missing one of the outstanding intellectual joys in contemporary Jewish life. I don’t say that idly. Week after week for 20-plus years, with an astonishing combination of erudition, curiosity and wit, he’s used readers’ inquiries into the origins of words and phrases to explore some lesser-known byways of history, culture, philosophy and sacred text. There’s nearly always a Jewish jumping off point, but oh, where he jumps to: Slavic, Anglo-Saxon, Chinese and any number of other civilizations. The bottom line is how interconnected we all are. When Ben Zoma said in Pirkei Avot (drawing on Psalm 119),
“mikol melamdai hiskalti” (I have gained wisdom from all my teachers), he had to be thinking of Philologos.
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Claims Conference Chief Knew of $57M Holocaust Fraud Probe Earlier 
Top Dog: Who Makes the Best Kosher Hot Dog in America?
Rama Burshtein Offers Rare Glimpse of Orthodox World
Why Do Jews Intermarry at a Much Higher Rate Than Others?
End Orthodox Monopoly on Jewish Marriage in Israel
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