“You’re not going to like my saying this,” Vice President Joe Biden told 6,000 delegates from the podium of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference — a spot that politicians usually vie over vigorously for the privilege of telling the crowd what they want to hear. But Biden, after sending up his…
Since retiring from his position as CEO of Home Depot, Bernard Marcus has become one of this country’s most vocal opponents of organized labor, criticizing unions in the media and on Capitol Hill. That is a long way from Marcus’s beginnings in a Newark, N.J., tenement some 80 years ago. Marcus’s parents were immigrants from…
Home-bound seniors on Manhattan’s West Side are complaining that the quality of kosher meals being delivered to them took a sudden turn for the worse this spring when new city contracting policies took effect — a situation some elderly Jews found so unpalatable that they actually decided to switch to receiving non-kosher meals. “It was…
Misha Lerner speaks softly but carries a big stick. At 10 years old, the sandy-haired, fair-skinned boy, his broken arm in a cast, seemed cherubic and unthreatening sitting among some 40 students who were listening to former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice at the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital on May 3….
The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously struck down a legal tool that was central to the prosecution of immigrant workers who were arrested at the Agriprocessors slaughterhouse in Iowa last May. After the raid at the kosher plant, nearly 300 illegal workers were charged with aggravated identity theft, which came with a minimum two-year prison…
The dismissal of all charges against two former pro-Israel lobbyists who had been accused of passing along state secrets has sent the Jewish community searching for answers, both internally and externally. Jewish communal leaders have been inquiring about the prosecution’s motivation, and whether pro-Israel activists were targeted for their views. But supporters of former defendants…
A Republican defector: Party-switch by Arlen Specter. He dons with pride a brand new hat That marks him as a Democrat. He’s now among those mavericks One seldom finds in politics. Presumably, on this new track, He’ll pledge allegiance to Barack. The right-wing pols, with vitriol And anger, lose their self-control. They see his switch…
Parenting is one long Jacob-and-the-angel-esque wrestling match with ethical dilemmas. Here’s this week’s bout: Maxine, age 4, was walking home from school with our wonderful babysitter Rita, and they passed a neighbor who often sits on her stoop. Maxine observed, loudly, “That lady is very fat!” Rita desperately hushed her: “Don’t say that!” When Rita…
Tzipi Livni, who twice nearly became the prime minister of Israel, walked into a chic, crowded Madison Avenue café with little fanfare, save for a few security guards, and had to wait for a table. She had come to New York fresh from Washington, where her address to the annual conference of the American Israel…
On a recent afternoon, Jacob Milgrom pored over the Book of Ezekiel in his Jerusalem study. The 86-year-old, one of the foremost biblical scholars alive today, took slow breaths and carefully marked the Hebrew text in pencil. On the opposite side of the house was his 80-year-old wife, Jo Milgrom. She, too, was pondering biblical…
In my family, holiday food traditions are never about what you might think of as traditional holiday food. Yes, we have matzah on Passover and apples and honey or Rosh Hashanah, but the traditions go deeper than that. At our Passover seder, we must have potato kuglets, made each year by different members of the…
