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‘Teflon’ Netanyahu Sidelines Feiglin
Jerusalem — It seemed like a disaster for Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu when ultra-hawks triumphed in the party’s December 8 primary. Moshe Feiglin, a far-rightist best known for advocating mass civil disobedience to protest the Oslo peace process in the mid-1990s, scored 20th on the party’s roster, all but guaranteeing him a place in…
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‘Gimpel’ Revival A Must-See
LIES, LUST AND PATHOS IN FOLKSBIENE’S NEW MUSICAL, “GIMPEL TAM” From his literary perch in heaven or hell — both of whose existence he doubted — Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer must be applauding the National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene’s delicious musical “Gimpel Tam” (“Gimpel the Fool”). Based on Singer’s 1945 short story, translated into English by…
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Tallying the Jewish Communal Losses
In the week since Bernard Madoff was arrested and accused of running one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history, hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to Jewish foundations and social service organizations have been totaled; two charities that backed mostly Jewish and Israeli causes have been shuttered. The ripple effect of the alleged…
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Madoff Scandal Rips Apart Close World of Jewish Philanthropy
Back before he was disgraced for losing investors billions in a massive alleged Ponzi scheme, financial adviser Bernard Madoff offered his services with a soft sell. Mark Seal, a longtime veteran of Jewish organizations, recalls watching Madoff make his pitch twice to Jewish organizations — once in the early 1990s, and once 10 years later….
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Sconces and Scrapbooks: A Visit to the Madoffs
We arrived, two scribes-for-hire, at the Madoff residence on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “Queens High Baroque,” we said sotto voce in unison as we stepped off the elevator and into the vestibule of the Madoffs’ apartment. It was a wet day, and we quietly removed our galoshes. We had been summoned by the lady of…
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Why the Jews? Debate Erupts Over How to Explain the Mumbai Terror
On December 5, just one week after terrorist atrocities left at least 180 dead in Mumbai, The Jewish Week of New York published a blistering editorial, consecrating the event as one more milestone in antisemitism. “And so Mumbai joins Kishinev, Hebron, Berlin, Babi Yar, Maalot, Sbarro’s, Sderot (we could easily mention 150 other sites) to…
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U.N. Resolution Is Bush’s Last Attempt To Save Annapolis Peace Process
With its days in office running out, the Bush administration turned to the United Nations to put its imprimatur on the struggling peace initiative that the United States launched in Annapolis, Md., a little more than a year ago. In a resolution co-sponsored by the United States and Russia, the U.N. Security Council declared its…
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Failed Plot To Kill Hitler Leads to Feature Film — and a Rabbi in Boston
Los Angeles — “Valkyrie,” the new film starring Tom Cruise as real-life German army officer Claus von Stauffenberg, culminates with a phalanx of German soldiers storming the Berlin military headquarters where Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators holed up after they believed they had killed Hitler. In a dramatic climax, Stauffenberg and his fellow officers who plotted…
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So You Wanna Be a Rock ’n’ Rebbe Star?
Shauly Grossman didn’t plan on being an Internet rock star. But that is exactly what happened to the 21-year-old self-identified Sanzer Hasid when a satirical song he recorded poking fun at the allegedly rock-star-like lifestyles of some Hasidic rebbes resurfaced as a hotly debated video on YouTube. Grossman’s song, set to the tune of “Rockstar”…
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What Sort of Man? Madoff on the Couch
In Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice,” Shylock, the usurious lender, attains the status of literature’s classic antisemitic stereotype, in part because of his relentless preying upon non-Jews. But the victims devastated by Bernard Madoff, the investment guru charged with running an alleged Ponzi scheme that blew through $50 billion of other people’s money, were…
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Merkin Seen as Enabler for Madoff
J. Ezra Merkin, the scion of a prominent family known for its generous support of Modern Orthodoxy, has emerged as a key link between a constellation of Orthodox institutions and Bernard Madoff, the Jewish financier now under house arrest for masterminding an alleged $50 billion fraud. Merkin and Madoff served together on the board of…
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