Later this month, the Forward will launch a partnership with the English edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Beginning January 24, a special four-page edition of the Forward will be inserted in Haaretz’s Sunday editions. “For Israeli readers, this will open a wider window to the Jewish world, and especially to the essential relationship between…
The Israeli police’s recent interrogation of Women of the Wall leader Anat Hoffman and member Nofrat Frenkel “opens a new and ominous chapter in intra-Jewish relations,” The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism declared in a sharply worded statement released January 11. USCJ, which represents 670 synagogues in North America, is urging its members to write…
Mina Bern, the doyenne of Yiddish theater who performed for audiences around the globe and acted in 12 films, died January 10 in New York City. She was 98. She spoke five languages, but said she was proud that Yiddish was her “best.” “Yiddish is such a rich language. As an actress I can convey…
Recently, my kids and I walked from our home to the park a few blocks away. My son Jeremy decided to roller-skate there, even though he’s still learning how. He can skate on his own on the smooth stretches of sidewalk, but needs help to keep from falling over bumps. We progressed at the pace…
Renewed threats of airborne terror have once again drawn attention to Israel’s track record of preventing terror attacks on airplanes. American commentators and politicians, riled by the recent failure to stop terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab from boarding a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit, have raised calls for “Israelification” of American airports and the adoption…
Yahya Yousuf al-Marhabi idly breaks off leaves from a branch of qat and adds them to the walnut-sized ball of pulp puffing up his cheek. As he sits on the carpeted floor of his living room, the television facing him shows Yemeni soldiers loading an artillery shell into a cannon and firing it toward rebel…
An early January announcement that Israeli authorities had approved a new Jewish settlement on the campus of an American-funded yeshiva in East Jerusalem came just weeks after President Obama issued a statement condemning new Israeli construction in the area. The yeshiva, called Beit Orot, received nearly half a million tax-free dollars in donations from an…
Warsaw Ghetto survivor Binyomin Katz, who saved himself by leaping out of a train headed for Majdanek, a concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, later died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 50. Markus Lerner of Sanok, Poland, survived the Holocaust amid the bitter cold of Siberia, where his mother stole chickens…
Josh Berer made a decision when he arrived in Yemen: He would tell people he was Christian. He had taken this precaution before — when he lived briefly in Jordan — but now, in the heart of the Arab world, where antisemitic rants blared at him constantly from loudspeakers and “Jew” was synonymous with evil,…
The Palestinian Authority has begun a campaign to stop, by year’s end, the Palestinians’ widespread practice of buying wine, chocolates, fruits and other items produced in the Jewish settlements. From a political standpoint, Palestinians have condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank throughout their four decades of existence. But from an economic viewpoint, there has…
Just months before the Nazis all but emptied the Warsaw Ghetto — sending some 300,000 of its residents to perish at Treblinka — they sent camera-wielding soldiers to capture the increasingly imperiled Jewish community within the ghetto walls. After 30 days of filming in May 1942, the soldiers packed up their equipment; their 62-minute film…
