Changes in America’s policy toward the Middle East conflict are sending positive vibrations throughout the small and struggling pro-Palestinian advocacy community. Activists for the Palestinian cause, who are now describing President Obama’s outreach speech to the Muslim world as “brilliant” and “brave,” are feeling emboldened by a new sense of openness within the administration. Some…
Celebrity sparkle wasn’t enough to sell Sammy Davis Jr.’s menorah at auction. The silver menorah that belonged to one of Judaism’s most famous converts went on the auction block June 8, but failed to garner the $10,000 minimum bid sought by the owner, a Judaica collector. “Oh, Samela,” sighed auctioneer Jonathan Greenstein, who said he…
There’s an old joke about a boy who comes running home from Hebrew school shouting: “Mommy, Mommy! I just got a part in the school play!” “That’s wonderful, dear,” the mother replies. “What’s the role?” “I’m going to be playing the part of the Jewish father.” “Don’t worry,” the mother says, “next year you’ll get…
For the longest time, Hasia R. Diner, a professor of American Jewish history at New York University, was troubled by the unexamined but widely held belief that in the aftermath of the Holocaust, American Jews did little, if anything, to memorialize the 6 million Jews murdered in Europe. So she decided to have a look…
I’m in the minority as far as Jews go in that I’m blonde. There are increasing number of blonde Jews but we’re still few and far between. I was president of my Jewish sorority in college so my picture was smack in the middle of our composite photo. Not only was I front and center…
“ADELINE MOSES LOEB” — A JOURNEY THROUGH A SEVEN-GENERATION JEWISH FAMILY TREE “This is a real night for American Jewish Southern history,” said Eli Evans at the May 5 book launch of “An American Experience: Adeline Moses Loeb and Her Early American Jewish Ancestors,” held at the Metropolitan Club and hosted by Loeb’s grandson, John…
While Mahmoud Abbas’s meeting with President Obama was widely described as uneventful, comments the Palestinian leader made in a Washington Post interview before entering the White House have led to a feisty debate within the Jewish community. In an interview with the Post’s Jackson Diehl, published May 29, the Palestinian president spoke freely, expressing a…
Since assuming his post as special adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Iran matters, Ambassador Dennis Ross has stepped back and refrained from discussing in public his suggestions for dealing with Tehran. However, in a book he co-wrote before assuming his new position, Ross reveals a skeptical approach toward one of the Obama…
Nearly six years after the housekeepers and dishwashers at the Congress Plaza Hotel first went on strike, the enormous hotel here on Chicago’s lakefront shows the marks of being a battle zone in America’s labor wars. Outside, the workers who went on strike in 2003 have kept up a nearly constant picket line in front…
In previous decades, an American president who pressured Israel to freeze settlement growth, as President Obama has done, would have riled large sections of Israel’s Jewish population. But public sympathy for settlers and the settlements is currently at an all-time low, adding a new dimension to the sometimes tense relationship between Washington and Jerusalem. Pollsters…
Like the best Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis, Manis Friedman has won the hearts of many unaffiliated Jews with his charismatic talks about love and God; it was Friedman who helped lead Bob Dylan into a relationship with Chabad. But Friedman, who today travels the country as a Chabad speaker, showed a less warm and cuddly side when…
