Steven I. Weiss
By Steven I. Weiss
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Culture Rabbinical Turf Fight in Lithuania Spills From Shul Onto Front Pages
A months-long battle between two rabbis in Lithuania turned violent last week as the pair scuffled during the Jewish harvest festival of Shavuot. As with most matters involving their feud, both Rabbi Sholom Krinsky and Rabbi Chaim Burshtein are claiming the high road and are unable to agree on the basic facts of the situation….
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News Orthodox Wig Controversy Likely To Ebb, Rabbis Say
The Indian hair at the heart of the enormous Orthodox wig controversy will, in the end, probably be ruled non-problematic, according to several prominent rabbinic sources contacted by the Forward. Though many leading Orthodox rabbis remain reluctant to speak on the record about the issue, two prominent rabbis — Rabbi Moshe Tendler of Yeshiva University,…
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News Right-wing Initiative Targets ‘Lost Jews’
Right-wing Orthodox activists in America have launched an initiative to bring tens of millions of so-called “lost Jews” from Asia and Europe to the West Bank. The new effort was highlighted in promotional advertisements for an annual concert in Central Park, which has become a major destination for tens of thousands of New York Jews….
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News O.U. Keeping Quiet in Stem Cell Debate
With embryonic stem cell research re-emerging as a matter of contentious ethical and political debate, the country’s largest Orthodox organization has kept out of the fight, though it opposes President Bush on the issue. The president’s August 2001 decision to limit federal funding for stem-cell research has come under increasing criticism in recent weeks by…
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News Death Ends Slain American’s Religious Journey
Being Jewish may have cost Nicholas Berg his life, said the father of the 26-year-old American contractor who was decapitated by Islamic militants in Iraq. The Forward has learned that the slain American had, during the past year, intensified his study and observance of Judaism, and taken to wearing tzitzit, or ritual fringes. His father,…
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News Sex Offender Becomes ‘Kabbalah Coach’
A convicted sex offender in Los Angeles has used an assumed name to market himself as a rabbi and Kabbalah instructor. Michael Ozair, who pleaded no contest to oral copulation of a 14-year-old girl in 2002, had until earlier this week been advertising himself as Rabbi Michael Ezra, the “Kabbalah Coach.” The KabbalahCoach.com Web site,…
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News Philanthropist Attacks University for Right Turn
The gloves came off in a long-simmering intra-Orthodox battle last week as the chairman of an upstart seminary castigated the leadership of Yeshiva University for a perceived rightward shift. Howard Jonas, the billionaire chairman of the fledgling Manhattan-based seminary, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, declared in a speech at the school’s first gala dinner that he had…
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News New Center for International Affairs Launched
Yeshiva University was set to launch its new center for international affairs Wednesday with a presentation by former State Department official Richard Haass, now president of the Council on Foreign Relations. The Rabbi Arthur S. Schneier Center for International Affairs is named for the Manhattan rabbi who has often worked for international causes, frequently under…
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