December 11 marks the one-year anniversary of Bernard Madoff’s arrest on fraud charges. In the days following his arrest, the Forward provided robust reporting on the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme’s impact on the Jewish community and its organizations. Early coverage probed Madoff’s communal connections, tallied organizational losses and took readers inside Madoff’s Upper East Side penthouse,…
Even as concern grows about civil resistance to new government construction limits in the West Bank, a Knesset committee has approved a bill to scrub clean the records of right-wingers arrested during violent protests against Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza. Under the bill, approved unanimously in late November by the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense…
So, this year marked my first Thanksgiving as a newly wed in New York. After all the amazing simcha of engagement parties, auf rufs (we had two), the wedding, and sheva brachot celebrations over the last month, a very small {quiet} Thanksgiving dinner with our downstairs neighbors seemed like a good way to detox. Maybe…
If you are looking for a Chanukah gift for a foodie (say… yourself!), or some new recipes for any of the Jewish holidays, then there’s a new book out that will be of help. Aviva Allen, author of the 2007 The Organic Kosher Cookbook, has just released a Holiday Edition. Ms. Allen provided me with…
NEWS ITEM: Yuri Foreman, a Russian-born, Brooklyn-based Israeli who is studying to be a rabbi, won the World Boxing Association’s super welterweight title in a Las Vegas bout. A rabbi trained to punch and maim? Whose goal is pugilistic fame? A boxer who excels in sports? Who runs around the ring in shorts? In manly…
For the past year, nearly 40 undocumented immigrants from Latin America have been kept in the United States for one reason: to testify against their former bosses at the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant. On November 19, the same prosecutors who had pushed for the witnesses to be kept in the country quietly announced that the…
The latest report from the FBI contained alarming news: There were 1,013 cases of hate crimes motivated by anti-Jewish bias in 2008 — an increase from the previous year, and the highest number of hate crimes against Jews reported since 2001. The report, released November 23, also showed that crimes against Jews comprise the large…
From the beginning, Jews have been a musical people. When God parted the Red Sea, what did Miriam do? She played the timbrel. When Saul was troubled by evil spirits, he called for David to play the harp. King David, in fact, was known as a great musician, and many of the psalms are attributed…
Massachusetts has the highest percentage of Jews outside the tristate New York area, and its Jewish community is known as one of the most politically active in the country. So, as the state’s Democrats get ready to select their replacement for the late Senator Edward Kennedy, why is the Jewish voice barely heard? “The Jewish…
On the surface, it looks as though Jerusalem is caught in a battle between old and new, as high-tech companies open factories with coveted jobs, while leaders of the large ultra-Orthodox population are adamant that the plants remain idle on Saturdays in observance of the Sabbath. This was the story widely told in the media…
Knowing Mayer Kirshenblatt, who died November 20 at age 93, was a rare privilege. Through him and his family, I learned about his hometown and a way of life — each remarkable in its own right, as was Kirshenblatt himself. For several decades, Kirshenblatt was the unofficial ambassador from Apt — the town in pre-World…
