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Disgruntled Synagogues Hold Back Confrontational Letter
A coalition of presidents from Conservative synagogues has agreed to refrain from sending a confrontational letter to the movement’s leadership, pending a face-to-face meeting within the next few weeks to discuss the presidents’ concerns. The letter, to which a dozen synagogue presidents had committed as signatories, threatened rebellion or outright secession if the United Synagogue…
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Orthodox, El Al Tensions
Orthodox Jews are being urged to shun El Al, Israel’s national air carrier, over its in-flight entertainment — a push that is widely viewed as a gambit in a larger struggle with the airline. The Rabbinical Transportation Committee, an influential body representing a cross-section of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, community, has published a guide telling…
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Freeman, Straight, No Chaser, as Critic of Israel
Charles “Chas” Freeman, who until recently was set to assume the post of chairman of the National Intelligence Council, wants to make a few things emphatically clear. Freeman would like it to be known that he does not believe, as some have charged he does, that American support of Israel caused the September 11 terrorist…
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IDF Lawyers Now Coming Under Fire for Their Counsel During Gaza Conflict
Rarely has the appointment of a law lecturer led to so much controversy. Students will now be learning law “from someone who helped justify the killing of civilians,” a Tel Aviv University lecturer complained to Haaretz after learning that Pnina Sharvit-Baruch is now a fellow faculty member. After her appointment in January, the university came…
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Plans To Move L.A. Community Library
For the past seven years, Larry Adler has made a habit of borrowing books and videos from the Jewish Community Library of Los Angeles. He signs out Jewish cookbooks to feed his love of the culinary arts, religious books to enhance his knowledge of Jewish texts and children’s books to help teach his 11-year-old daughter…
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Joseph Sherman, 65, Yiddish Scholar and Translator
Joseph Sherman, a scholar and translator of Yiddish literature who is best known for Translating Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel “Shadows on the Hudson,” died March 20. He was 65. The cause of death was complications from pancreatitis. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Sherman was a longtime professor of English literature at the University of the…
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Labor’s Role in Bibi’s Team
Depending on one’s interpretation, Labor’s decision to join Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-led coalition grants Israel’s incoming government either a kosher seal of approval or a fig leaf to disguise a right-wing agenda. Either way, Labor’s move will make Netanyahu Israel’s next prime minister. After a contentious meeting of the Labor Central Committee on March 24, members…
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Past Meets Present: Filming Jewish Life in Prague
Mark Podwal is obsessed with Prague. Not only has the New York-based artist and dermatologist visited the city 15 times, but he also has a Golem story by which he swears. In 1997, during a major restoration of Prague’s 700-year-old Altneuschul synagogue, the curator of the project invited Podwal to see the normally off-limits attic…
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Sholom Aleichem: A Celebration
BEL KAUFMAN RECALLS GRANDFATHER SHOLOM ALEICHEM AT BASH AT THE PLAYERS “The greatest gift of the Jews to the Irish was corned beef and cabbage!” declared Pete Hamill, master of ceremonies at the March 17 celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sholom Aleichem, held in Manhattan at The Players. “There was no…
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Old World Flavor
Walk through the unmarked black doors of a nondescript brick building in Brooklyn, and you stumble onto a time machine. Here, at one of the half-dozen or so shmura matzo factories remaining in New York, a bustling team of bakers keeps alive the art of making matzo the old-fashioned way. “This is the way it…
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Honoring Cape Verde’s Jewish History
One of the world’s smallest Jewish communities is getting attention after being all but forgotten for decades. An attempt to restore the Jewish heritage of Cape Verde, an archipelago off the shores of West Africa and home to several hundred Jews during the 19th century, was launched in Washington on March 18. Cape Verde no…
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