Boxing is a sport for immigrants, for tough young men looking to make a living. Which is why it used to be a sport for American Jews. Before World War II, there were a number of superior Jewish fighters, like Benny Leonard, Barney Ross and Maxie Rosenbloom. But these days, the Jews in boxing tend…
It’s the sixth race at New York’s Aqueduct Racetrack, and David Cohen is rounding into the home stretch on the back of a black filly named Beautiful Pear. He is crouched over her, the both of them gray from splattered dirt, his whip slapping furiously at the filly’s right shoulder as they battle toward the…
Over the summer, I took my kids to the shore with my friend Mia and her children. At a beachside café, I explained to my 5-year-old son, Jeremy, what was on the children’s menu. “You can have macaroni and cheese,” I said. “Yay!” he said, jumping up and down. “Or you could have a grilled…
Have an old bread machine hanging around? Want the taste of challah without the effort? I’ve made this delicious egg bread from a recipe in this cookbook. It’s delicious for sandwiches, french toast, regular toast, and dunked into soup. This past summer I bought my bread machine for $25 at the local Goodwill. It came…
LOSS AND HOPE AT THE STELLAR ALZHEIMER’S ASSOCIATION RITA HAYWORTH GALA Honorees, award presenters and guests at the October 27 “So Near & Yet So Far” Alzheimer’s Association Rita Hayworth Gala had a vested reason for the urgency to find a cure for a disease that currently afflicts 5.3 million Americans. When she was 19,…
We have just published our annual Forward 50 list of the people who are making a difference in the American Jewish community. What do you think about our choices? We invite you to weigh in below.
Facing a political crisis in the Palestinian Authority, the Obama administration has privately presented Israel with a list of measures it should take to bolster embattled leader Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas’s recent decision not to run again for the P.A. presidency was one of the main topics discussed in a November 9 meeting between President Barack…
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s threat to withdraw from Palestinian Authority politics — an act that could have grave consequences should he make good on it — is only the tip of a large iceberg threatening to sink the very structure of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. For the first time since the Oslo process began 16 years ago,…
Like everything else about his colorful life — which ended abruptly and violently in a hail of bullets on a Moscow street in early November — Shabtai von Kalmanovic’s large collection of Judaica has been both shrouded in mystery and subject to exaggeration. There is no quick and easy way to describe Kalmanovic’s bizarre existence….
Swiss-born Muslim scholar and public intellectual Tariq Ramadan has for decades been a lightning rod for controversy. He was barred from entry to America by the Patriot Act’s “ideological exclusion provision,” and then on account of his financial contributions to two Hamas charities. Even so, he took center stage at the American Academy of Religion’s…
The only synagogue in Greenville, N.C., sits on the outskirts of this old tobacco town in a converted funeral home. Inside, on a recent Friday, people milled, kibitzed and greeted one another: “Good Shabbos.” “How y’all doing?” Nametags were distributed to make everyone feel comfortable. The bright strum of a guitar coaxed the guests —…
