For the first time in America’s decades of jousting with Israel over West Bank settlements, an American president seems to have succeeded in isolating the settlements issue and disconnecting it from other elements of support for Israel. It is a disentanglement now seen most clearly in Congress, which in the past served as Israel’s stronghold…
Rabbi Judith Lewis of the Riverdale Temple asked the two conversion candidates about to enter the mikveh: Are you sure you want to do this? It’s not an uncommon question for converts to Judaism, but it was especially relevant at that very moment. This was one day after four men were arrested in the Bronx…
On a recent sun-washed Saturday morning, after the conclusion of Sabbath services at the historic Touro Synagogue, some 20 members gathered outside and gazed across a barren dirt patch toward where the Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Visitors Center — an immaculate new stone building and a peeling old wood frame house under renovation —…
Amos Elon, the Israeli journalist and author who died in Italy on May 25 at age 82, was described for decades as Israel’s leading public intellectual — the writer who, more than any other, explained Israelis to themselves and to the world. And yet, he spent his final years in self-described “exile” in Italy, despairing…
Leading Soviet Jewry and human rights activist Si Frumkin has died. Frumkin, who founded the Southern California Council for Soviet Jews in 1968 and helped make it a mainstream American cause, died May 15 after battling cancer. He was 78. At a packed funeral service on May 19, Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky eulogized…
Fashionably late, the Conservative movement is joining the growing world of Jewish advocacy in the nation’s capital. Decades after the Reform and Orthodox movements set up shop in Washington, the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative movement has decided to launch a small operation to bring the voice of Conservative Judaism to decision-makers. The initiative will…
While most of the world is fixated on Jerusalem’s take on the settlements and peace negotiations, inside Israel, lawmakers have found time to fight over a very different cause: a plan to tax fruits and vegetables. The plan, not yet implemented, has provoked a storm of opposition in the Knesset, including within Prime Minister Benjamin…
When the joint Catholic monarchs of Spain, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, ordered the expulsion of Jews from Spain on March 31, 1492, they probably wouldn’t have cared to know that they were helping to create one of the most remarkable musical traditions the world has ever known. Of course, the…
The combination of meat and cheese always sounded delicious to me. It still does. If kashrut were not a guiding principle in my life, it would make good gastronomical sense to put a nice piece of cheese on that burger I just put on the grill. But I have been kosher about as long as…
Blintzes are most often described in relation to other foods. They are “like pancakes” but thinner, “like Russian blini” except without the yeast, or “like crepes,” just folded a little differently. Still, blintzes are a delicacy all their own. Originally from the Ukraine, fillings like cheese, potato, and kasha were folded inside the blintz wrappers…
The White House announced on Friday that U.S. President Barack Obama will not be presenting an American initiative for peace in the Middle East during his speech in Cairo on June 4, Israel Radio reported. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that Obama’s speech would address Washington’s relationship with Muslims worldwide. “This will be…
