Days before the controversial appearance by the head of J Street at the University of Pennsylvania’s Hillel, critics of the left-wing Israel lobby announced that they would hold a counter-event in the same building at the same time. The prospect of an explosive evening came on the heels of weeks of harsh criticism aimed at…
As children, joking and gossiping, spilled out of Brooklyn’s Khalil Gibran International Academy on a frigid Friday afternoon recently, one stopped to answer a waiting reporter’s question about his experience there. “It’s a cool school,” he said. “It’s a good school to go to —” he continued, before another student cut him off. “Don’t say…
Rabbi Bernard Lander, the founder and president of Touro College, died February 8 of congestive heart failure at his home in Queens, the college has announced. He was 94. Lander started Touro in 1971 after spending two decades as a sociology professor at Yeshiva University, where he also served as dean of the university’s Bernard…
NEWS ITEM: Religious leaders — from Reform to Orthodox — are increasingly supportive of the medical use of marijuana. Should marijuana be forbid To everyone who is a Yid? Is puffing on the suspect weed Offensive to the Jewish creed? Or is cannabis kosher now, On grounds it soothes the fevered brow And eases torments…
Many of us grew up in homes where there was little or no Jewish art. It seemed kitschy, or people were simply not ready to go wall-to-wall Chagall. Today, however, we are looking with fresh eyes at Jewish art and, when the price is right, schlepping some of it home. But many Jews, especially younger…
‘Let us pray” often opens funerals and weddings, but budget meetings? When you work at a Catholic college, you come to expect getting blessed without sneezing and praying before committee meetings. The first time I heard prayer at work was at a staff meeting at the Catholic college library where I had just been hired….
Radio Maryja is a source of embarrassment to many Poles, but the diatribes from this radio station, intermingled with lengthy prayer sessions, are heard by millions of listeners each day. Its programs exploit listeners’ fears that Poland’s new capitalist democracy undermines their traditional Catholic way of life. Jews and Masons are viewed as threatening outside…
AMERICAN SAMPLERS, TRAMP ART AND A BIT OF JEWISH IMMIGRANT HISTORY AT AMERICAN ANTIQUE SHOW In keeping with the Texas theme of the January 20 opening-night preview of the American Antique Show at the Metropolitan Pavilion, the party’s grand chairman was Lynda Johnson Robb, daughter of former president Lyndon B. Johnson. Also in the photographers’…
NEWS ITEM: Observant Jews are concerned over the expanding use of whole-body imaging machines for airport security. The scene the airport screener saw Did violence to Jewish law! His body-imaging machine Displayed a sight that was obscene, A true affront, a crudity, A fully frontal nudity! Before a traveler’s plane departs, He/she now shows their…
Meeting a deadline of February 5 set by the United Nations, Israel and Hamas have offered their responses to what has become known as the Goldstone Report, the controversial 547-page investigation of the Gaza incursion in 2008-09 that accused both combatants of war crimes. The two sides, not surprisingly, emerged with vastly different interpretations of…
Under attack as a subversive, anti-Israel group, the New Israel Fund, the largest financial supporter of human rights groups in Israel, has opted to respond by rallying supporters of a progressive agenda in Israel. Adopting a notably combative tone under new leadership, the American- based charity is depicting an accusatory report by a new Israeli…
געוויסע עקספּערטן האַלטן, אַז מע דאַרף באַטראַכטן ל״ג־בעומר ווי אַ פֿרילינגדיקן מײַ־פֿעסטיוואַל
