It was a feather in the cap of pro-boycott activists, but for Israelis, a major setback. With battle lines drawn across concert halls and stadiums hosting rock bands, the decision by mega-star Elvis Costello to cancel his planned concerts in Israel is being viewed as a game changer. In a statement posted on his website,…
Some 400 protesters gathered recently outside a prison dating back to the British Mandate to offer solidarity with inmates who are being hailed by some as modern-era Sharanskys. “Refuseniks claimed the right for Jews to live in a certain place in the world, and these youngsters are defending that right,” Likud party activist Shlomo Amshalem…
A group of prominent American Jews is circulating an online petition supporting the Obama administration’s “vigorous encouragement” of Israel and the Palestinians to “make the concessions necessary” to advance the peace process. The petition, posted at www.forthesakeofzion.org on May 13, claims inspiration from the European Jewish Call for Reason, otherwise known as JCall. A petition…
Charlotte Jacobson, 97, who as Hadassah national president reclaimed the Jerusalem land where the organization’s flagship hospital now sits, died on May 14 in Florida. Jacobson was Hadassah president from 1964 to 1968, including during the Six Day War. For 60 years, she served in many leadership positions in American and world Zionist organizations. In…
Leo Bretholtz was among more than 1,000 Jews shoved onto a train bound for Auschwitz on November 6, 1942, leaving from a suburb of Paris. Bretholtz and a friend managed to squeeze through the barred window and escape from the train car, but 773 of the Jews on that train were gassed to death by…
Three months after San Francisco’s Jewish federation became the first in the nation to announce formal restrictions on funding for Israel programs, this liberal, largely dovish regional slice of American Jewry remains aflame with debate and denunciations of the move as a lurch toward censorship. In the latest development, 73 Bay Area rabbis, intellectuals and…
Stanford University will introduce a new doctoral concentration in education and Jewish studies, thanks to a $12 million grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation. The grant, which will endow a professorship for the program, is the largest gift in the history of Stanford’s School of Education. The program is expected to launch in January, 2011….
What would the legendary newspaper editor do in journalism today, when the business model that served him — and all of us — so well for so long has been completely upended? When readership is fragmented, attention spans have shrunk, and anyone with a blog address and an opinion can call himself a journalist? I…
All About Ab (Cahan) from Jewish Daily Forward on Vimeo. The push and pull between the hot embrace of a native community and the exhilarating freedoms of America has riven nearly every immigrant group in this country — not least of which the Jews. Many of the Yiddish-speaking arrivals who came by the boatload in…
All About Ab (Cahan) from Jewish Daily Forward on Vimeo. Fannie Jacobson remembers Abraham Cahan as a brilliant man who wrote like a dream and had a commanding presence in what was then the Forward’s headquarters on East Broadway. His special lair was the newsroom on the ninth floor of the 10-story tower. But he…
I wanted to know what sort of impression the new “Forverts” was making on the public; how they reacted to the various articles; what was good, what had to be changed, and what sort of other news it would be advisable to introduce. For this purpose, at the beginning, I often spent two or three…
נאָך איר מאַנס טויט אין 2003 האָט זי געהאָלפֿן אַרויסגעבן זײַן לעקסיקאָן פֿון די ייִדישע שרײַבער אין ראַטן־פֿאַרבאַנד.
