Donald Snyder
By Donald Snyder
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News Germany Debates Proposal To Protect Circumcision
A proposal to enshrine circumcision of male children as a protected procedure that Jews and Muslims could continue without fear of sanction faces an uncertain fate in Germany’s Bundestag, say close observers of German politics. The proposal heading to the parliament aims to calm a storm that erupted last May after a Cologne court ruled…
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News Jews Stream Back to Germany
For decades after the Holocaust, many Jews harbored an almost instinctive aversion to things German. But today, tens of thousands of Israelis, Jews from the former Soviet Union and even many American Jews are actively choosing German citizenship. Sound unreal? It’s today’s reality. According to a study by Dr. Sima Salzberg of Bar-Ilan University, 100,000…
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News Not Your Grandma’s Poland Anymore
When Poland’s new Sejm, or Parliament, was seated recently, the nationally televised event showed something never before seen in this conservative nation: a transsexual woman and an openly gay man being solemnly sworn in along with other parliamentarians. The seminal event was a consequence of the emergence of Palikot, a new, explicitly anti-clerical, libertarian-oriented party…
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News Swedish Jews Get Help To Fight Anti-Semitism
Jews in Malmo, Sweden, lately a hotbed of anti-Semitic attacks, are responding positively to the Swedish government’s decision to devote $622,000 to security for Sweden’s Jewish community. Rabbi Shneur Kesselman, who said he had been taunted by Muslim youth on five separate occasions the very day that he was interviewed by phone, told the Forward…
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News American Cadets Visit Auschwitz in Search of Answers
In an upstairs room at the only remaining synagogue in this town, 37 miles west of Krakow, 13 future American military officers wrestled with ethical questions in the actual shadow of Auschwitz. Clad in jeans and T-shirts, the students from West Point, the U.S. Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy and the Honors Program of…
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News A Plea for Peace From a Palestinian Doctor Who Embodies Human Tragedy
Izzeldin Abuelaish, the Gazan doctor who lost four members of his family when an Israeli rocket destroyed his house during Operation Cast Lead, used a medical analogy to warn against hating those who cause us great harm. “Hatred is a chronic disease,” Abuelaish told a group of 60 people who had gathered at Central Connecticut…
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Books In New Book, Grave Robbing and Other Stories of Poles’ Complicity
Jan Gross is once again forcing Poland to take a new look at its past. The Polish-American historian, whose previous books generated heated controversy and self-examination, has written a searing new indictment of Polish behavior toward Jews during World War II. “Golden Harvest,” a new book by Gross and his former wife, Irena Grudzinska-Gross, charges…
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News In a Rich Irony, German Jews Defend Muslims
In Germany today, Muslims are often cited as a driving force behind contemporary German anti-Semitism — and are increasingly a target of ethnic-based prejudice and bigotry. Yet leaders of Germany’s Jewish community have joined others in combating what many view as a tidal wave of German Islamophobia. Though this is rich in irony, Jewish leaders…
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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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Culture At Eurovision, Israel’s near triumph shows the limits of tolerance
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Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
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Opinion The profound internal contradiction that could spell doom for Hillel
In Case You Missed It
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News The Black Jewish experience, and Black-Jewish relations, take center stage on Fifth Avenue
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Yiddish אַ רעפֿעראַט אויף ייִדיש אין מינכן פֿונעם ליטעראַטור־פֿאָרשער נתן כּהן A Yiddish lecture in Munich by literature scholar Nathan Cohen
די „שלום־עליכם לעקציע“ וועט מען קענען הערן אויפֿן אָרט אָדער דורך דער אינטערנעץ.
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Fast Forward Hundreds of Jewish leaders call on Israeli ambassador to apologize for attack on J Street
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Culture Despite what (Ashkenazi) tradition says, not everyone eats dairy on Shavuot