Sherry Leffert writes from Cambridge, Mass.: “A German-speaking, non-Jewish friend of mine likes to compare German words with Yiddish ones. Recently, we were talking about Yiddish mentsh and German Mensch. Since the primary meaning of both words is a man, we were wondering: Does their secondary meaning of a person of integrity and honor refer…
Jane R. Eisner, editor of the Forward, has been selected for a 2009 Sigma Delta Chi award for excellence in journalism for a series of three editorials she wrote about gender and family issues. The Society of Professional Journalists announced the award May 3, honoring outstanding work published in 2009 in print, on radio and…
The home of Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the left-wing Jewish magazine Tikkun, was vandalized sometime during the night of Sunday, May 2. According to Berkeley police, fliers attacking Lerner for supporting “terrorism” and “Islamo-fascism” were glued to Lerner’s door, along with a cartoon of Lerner and South African jurist Richard Goldstone, author of the…
Steve Almond may have descended from rabbis, but his church is rock ‘n’ roll. His new book, the memoir “Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life” (Random House, 2010) is a tour through “drooling” fanaticism, the kind of music appreciation that borders on the insane. With the fervor of a religious leader, Almond writes about…
NEWS ITEM: In Shanghai, Jews are eagerly buying kosher milk. The product comes in cartons that carry the drawing of a smiling cow wearing a yarmulke. “The cow is of the bovine ilk, “One end is moo; the other, milk.” So Ogden Nash once versified In words that rhymed and clarified. Today, he’d register surprise…
A prolonged standoff over how to direct American Jewish funds overseas has led to a serious conflict over the community’s priorities: sustaining poor Jews around the world, or strengthening Jewish identities and ties to Israel? The debate over which of these two needs is more deserving of the dwindling dollars collected by the large umbrella…
Israel Museum Supporters Ponder the Whitney Biennial at Luncheon “We live in a world of miracles!” said James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, to the elegant assemblage at the April 13 American Friends of the Israel Museum luncheon, held at the Metropolitan Club. Snyder reported that the more than $300,000 raised “will…
As millions of people worldwide — celebrities like Madonna among them — turn to Kabbalah in hopes of solving their problems, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are going one step further by appealing directly to the man some consider to be the author of mystical Judaism’s most important text. In early May, Rabbi Shimon Bar…
At 11 p.m. on May 3, a group of marchers will begin a candlelight vigil at Kent State University in Ohio to recall what is for many a distant echo from another era. The killing of four unarmed students by members of the Ohio National Guard during a national wave of campus protests against the…
When Sarah Palin was asked by Barbara Walters late last year whether she supported a freeze on settlement growth in the West Bank, Palin issued an emphatic no. But her reasoning confounded many: “More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think…
The growing sentiment within the organized Jewish community was unmistakable. Amid recent fears of a crisis in relations between Washington and Jerusalem, key players were calling on the community to take off its gloves. Yet when the umbrella group responsible for addressing the administration on behalf of American Jewry finally spoke, it was with measured…
