Nacha Cattan
By Nacha Cattan
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News Discussion of Women Rabbis Causes Stir
At this week’s gathering of Orthodox feminists, women read from the Torah and led the Kaddish prayer during mixed-gendered services. Still, at least one topic had the power to shock this crowd: women rabbis. At this annual conference of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, the subject was raised by two young women in the audience…
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News Orthodox Feminists Grapple With Issues of Sexuality
Faced with lurid popular images like Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl striptease and the stark reality of sexually active adolescents, Orthodox girls would be expected to turn to rabbinic law for guidance. The problem, says Jewish educator Tova Hartman, is that in religious schools sexuality is either dealt with through an “oy vey” curriculum that lays…
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News Reviving a Defunct Dialogue About Crown Heights
Showtime’s made-for-television movie “Crown Heights” was shot mostly in Toronto — and it shows. But despite its tendency to make things neater and prettier than they actually were, the film manages to offer an honest lesson about the 1991 riots that shook Crown Heights, Brooklyn. “Crown Heights” is based on a true story about an…
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News Communal Organizations Eye Lieberman
Senator Joseph Lieberman may have given up the presidential ticket, but some of his Jewish admirers have a new mission for him: leader of a major Jewish organization. It’s a mission that his closest friends and relatives says he’s highly unlikely to accept. “No way, no how,” said one close associate of Lieberman’s. Leaders of…
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News Israel Makes Play for Swiss Bank Funds
The Israeli government and an international Holocaust restitution organization with which it is allied are raising eyebrows — and hackles — with a proposal that 48% of any funds left unclaimed from the $1.25 billion Swiss bank settlement be assigned to Israeli charities and government ministries. The request comes in a proposal submitted by the…
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News Cost of Medicine Imperiling Lives Of Sick Survivors
For Melvin Tilles, the oft-recycled phrase “your money or your life” has had a more literal applicability than for most. After two heart attacks and as many bypasses, Tilles, a Holocaust survivor living in Los Angeles, had one hope to continue living: a heart transplant. But his doctors did not want to perform the surgery….
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News Christians Launch Effort To Counter Film’s Impact
With the controversial film “The Passion of the Christ” set to open next month, some Christian groups are launching campaigns to counter theological errors that may exist in Mel Gibson’s account of the death of Jesus, while several Roman Catholic scholars are calling on their church to outline publicly its doctrinal belief as a counterbalance…
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News Cardinals Meet For a Dialogue With Top Rabbis
In a move that may reestablish the World Jewish Congress as the primary Jewish partner for dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, this week the organization arranged an unprecedented gathering of top-level Catholic and Jewish religious leaders from around the world. The two-day “open dialogue” included current and former chief rabbis from six countries including…
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