Rebecca Spence
By Rebecca Spence
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Israel News She Thinks She Can Dance
Just six years ago, when Hanna-Lee Sakakibara plunged through the floor of a Jerusalem wedding hall in an infamous disaster that left 23 Israelis dead, it was unclear whether she would ever pirouette again. But next week she will become the first Israeli to appear on the Fox reality show “So You Think You Can…
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News Parents in N.J. Rally To Save Schechter School
In an 11th-hour decision following an emotional plea from parents and students, the board of the New York City area’s only Conservative Jewish high school voted to keep the financially strapped institution’s doors open for the near future. A Monday evening board meeting to decide the fate of the Metropolitan Schechter High School in Teaneck,…
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News As Evangelical Firebrand Hooks Up With Federations, Liberals Speak Out
Pastor John Hagee, the firebrand evangelical Christian minister from San Antonio, Texas, had thousands of pro-Israel activists standing, clapping and chanting at this year’s annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Hagee’s virtuoso performance at the conference in March underscored his emergence as a linchpin in the growing political alliance between Jewish and…
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News Lawyers Debate at Air Force Academy
Colorado Springs, Colo. – Two controversial attorneys representing opposite ends of the church-state separation dispute faced off at the U.S. Air Force Academy here this week in an impassioned debate over the reach of evangelical Christianity in the ranks of the military. The debate pitted Mikey Weinstein, the New Mexico attorney who sued the Air…
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News Conference of Presidents Pick Hailed By Groups Critical of Hoenlein’s Role
Internal critics of the umbrella organization widely viewed as the American Jewish community’s consensus voice on Middle East affairs are lauding the nominee to head the group. June Walker, national president of the women’s Zionist organization Hadassah, was tapped Monday to chair the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Walker, a veteran volunteer…
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News Charity Chiefs Propose Restructuring Agency
The heads of United Jewish Communities, the troubled umbrella organization of American Jewish federated charities, dropped a bombshell on their officers and constituents this month in the form of a sweeping and largely unexpected plan for restructuring the flagging organization. The plan, laid out in a strategy paper that has only recently begun to circulate…
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Culture The Go-Between
Between 2002 and 2006, photographer Gillian Laub made more than a dozen trips to Israel and the Palestinian territories to shoot portraits of everyday people going about their lives. Those lives, often interrupted by violence and bearing the scars of the conflict, are explored in her new book, “Testimony” (Aperture). The Forward’s Rebecca Spence spoke…
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News The Showdown Between Two Forward Icons
Legendary editor Abraham Cahan and writer Isaac Bashevis Singer
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