It has neither the quiet sophistication of a samovar nor the humble rumble of a rolling pin. But is there a cooking utensil with a more Yiddishe soul than the hakmeser, the indispensable hand-held chopping knife whose seamless crossing from shtetl to New World is still in evidence today? Of all the gizmos in my…
David Simmons is English, but loves American Jewish funny men unapologetically. He’s full of little-known anecdotes about Borscht Belt darlings who burned their acts into our consciousness, and produced American Jewish humor as we know it. A record company CEO and music publisher, Simmons worked with Fleetwood Mac and Bob Marley. He hosted the 2007…
The Conservative movement has launched a campaign to raise awareness of the captivity of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s youth and young adult services department has begun a Yellow Balloon campaign to mark the fourth anniversary of Shalit’s captivity. Shalit was captured in a cross-border raid on June 25, 2006…
Helen Thomas quit her job with Hearst in the wake of mounting outrage over her assertion that Israeli Jews should “return” to Poland, Germany and the United States. “Helen Thomas announced Monday that she is retiring, effective immediately,” said a statement issued Monday by the Hearst Corp. “Her decision came after her controversial comments about…
Israel’s Navy killed four men that it said were planning a terror attack at sea. Early Monday morning, the Navy forces fired on Palestinians wearing diving suits off the coast of Gaza. The men were “on their way to perpetrate a terrorist attack,” according to the Israel Defense Forces spokesman. No Israeli forces were hurt….
Israel’s blockade of Gaza is comparable to sanctions levied by the United States Congress against the apartheid regime of South Africa in 1986, Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank told the Forward in an interview June 3. Rebutting critics who decry the effects of the Israeli blockade on the health and welfare of Gaza’s Palestinian residents, Frank…
A few weeks ago, I was reminiscing with a member of a Turkish nongovernmental organization, a person who works on improving business ties with Israel and the Palestinians, about the golden age of Turkey-Israel relations. We weren’t talking about a decade ago, when military ties were solidified and the now shattered “love affair” between the…
In this week’s Yid Lit podcast, host Allison Gaudet Yarrow sits down with author Julie Orringer. Her new novel “The Invisible Bridge” serves as a reminder that in a field as crowded as artistic representations of the Holocaust there is always something new to say, so long as there are individual stories to tell. The…
Jane Harman is known as one of Israel’s most ardent supporters in Congress, but now, as she faces a challenge from the left, the electoral appeal of this support is being put to the test. On June 8, Democrats in California’s 36th District will choose between two Jewish women: the incumbent Harman, representing the party’s…
As the sun rose on the day following the so-called Freedom Flotilla’s attempt to breach the Israeli blockade of Gaza, the American Jewish Committee had already sent out an e-mail blast touting its narrative of the bloody denouement that took place. An hour later came talking points from the Jewish Federations of North America. A…
To Megan McArdle, business and economics editor of The Atlantic, the illegality of Israel’s May 31 interdiction against a civilian ship as it sought to bust Israel’s blockade of Gaza was self-evident, and based on a common sense observation. “This morning,” she wrote on June 1, on her Atlantic blog, “a bunch of people are…
