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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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Shopper’s Remorse
My first major purchase with money I had earned myself was a black-velvet gown from the Laura Ashley store in the retail court of the swanky Charles Hotel, in Cambridge, Mass. I bought the dress six weeks into my career as a Harvard University freshman and research assistant to a Kennedy School professor so that…
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A Good Read
The New York Times recently published its roundup of the year’s Best Illustrated Children’s Books, and I had to laugh: Some of them are the literary equivalent of liver wrapped in spinach and seasoned with mortgages and Xanax. In other words, they have zero appeal to actual children. Somber hyperrealist paintings, delicately austere collages, sleek…
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Charities, Day Schools Hard Hit by Madoff Scandal
The collapse of the investment firm of Bernard Madoff has opened a black hole at the center of the tight knit circles of wealthy Jews who socialize and do business together, and who, year after year, support Jewish causes. Madoff, who stands accused of running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, served on the board of Yeshiva…
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Ed Zwick Turns His Lens on a Quartet of Jewish Partisans
Among the slew of Holocaust and Holocaust-related films opening this holiday season comes “Defiance,” based on Nechama Tec’s book about the remarkable true story of the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who safeguarded the lives of some 1,200 Jews in the Naliboki forest in Belorussia (Belarus) for more than two years during the war. The Forward’s…
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Madoff Arrest Sends Shockwaves Through Jewish Philanthropy
The arrest of Wall Street trader Bernard L. Madoff, who federal agents say defrauded investors of an estimated $50 billion, has had immediate consequences in the Jewish philanthropic world. One charity already closed and insiders are worried that the ramifications of Madoff’s financial demise may extend to the many organizations he supported and the wealthy…
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A Musical Evening
DYNAMIC DUDAMEL CONDUCTS THE ISRAEL PHILHARMONIC AT CARNEGIE HALL “The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra will continue to make beautiful music… and seek peace,” Lily Safra told the American Friends of the IPO audience at the November 17 Celebration of Israel’s 60th Anniversary concert, held at Carnegie Hall. “To chair such an event in the United States……
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‘Sacred Vows, Secret Affairs’
NEWS ITEM: In a televised report entitled “Sacred Vows, Secret Affairs,” CBS News uncovered a surprising degree of sexual immorality in New York’s ultra-Orthodox community, a group famously known for high standards of righteous behavior. Cited as one causative factor was the prevalence of pre-arranged marriage, causing unhappy spouses to seek fulfillment elsewhere. Ingesting too…
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