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Battle for France’s Top Rabbi Post Goes Viral
UPDATE: Rabbi Gilles Bernheim was elected France’s chief rabbi on Sunday. For more, click here. The election of France’s chief rabbi is generally a quiet affair decided by insiders. This year, thanks to the freedoms of the Internet, the campaign has turned into a raucous, innuendo-filled cyber-battle featuring Facebook pages, video postings — some of…
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Thaw Between Syria and Israel Puts Hezbollah on Front Burner
Washington – As peace talks between Israel and Syria picked up momentum this past week, both Jerusalem and Damascus signaled a willingness to consider policy changes that could quarantine the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah. On June 18, Israel agreed to open discussions on the future of Shebaa Farms, a disputed piece of land on Israel’s…
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In Heated Meeting, Orthodox Activists Spar With Kosher Meat Company
When two progressively minded Orthodox rabbinical students sat down last week at a Manhattan kosher dairy restaurant with four Lubavitch businessmen, radically different segments of the Orthodox world collided, and sparks flew. The rabbinical students and a young rabbi who accompanied them were from Uri L’Tzedek, a liberal Orthodox activist group organizing a boycott of…
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Jewish Community Centers Open Their Doors to Wider Audiences
York, Pa. – The entrance lobby of the York Jewish Community Center in York, Pa., is decorated with all the traditional trappings of a JCC: paintings of Israel, a Holocaust memorial sculpture and a glass case with Judaica for sale. Yet, during a recent visit the center proved itself distinctly lacking in one key department:…
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Leading Orthodox Pol Turns Back on Proteges
Dov Hikind, a grandfather of Orthodox Jewish politics in New York, appears to be turning his back on some of his closest political kin with his endorsements this season. Hikind, a Democratic state assemblyman from the 48th district of the Boro Park section of Brooklyn, has spent years overseeing the work of younger Orthodox politicians,…
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Hillel Looks to the Future
NEW YORK REAL ESTATE DYNAMO JACKY TEPLITZKY HONORED BY PAJAMA PROGRAM “I grew up in a low-income, middle-class area in [Santiago] Chile,” said Manhattan real estate maven Jacky Teplitzky, recipient of the Sweet Dreams Award at the Pajama Program’s May 2 luncheon, held at the Hotel Pierre. Her family moved to Israel, where Teplitzky served…
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Protest Outside Hotel Decries ‘Shonde’
At a protest marking five years since the outset of an ongoing strike at a major Chicago hotel, a crowd of some 1,100 striking workers and their allies got a surprise Yiddish lesson. Among the placards being brandished by protesters was one that read “What a shonde!” — Yiddish for “shame.” The protesters had come…
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Workmen’s Circle Names New Leader
The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring, a century-old fraternal organization devoted to the furtherance of Yiddish language and culture, recently appointed its first female executive director. Ann Toback, formerly the assistant executive director of the Writers Guild of America, East, was installed June 9. Originally a socialist organization devoted to safeguarding the rights of immigrant workers, the…
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Activists Team Up on New Orleans Mission
Activists from the Jewish and African American communities joined forces June 15 in a four-day mission to New Orleans with the aim of taking a new look on issues of race, poverty and change in America. Organizers with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs paired lo-cal leaders from both communities in four cities to lend…
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Bending Traditions in Ghana
Though you’d never guess it by looking at my pale Canadian Jewish face, I was once an African drummer. My transformation began 15 years ago, when I joined a West African drum ensemble in Toronto. My fellow drummers, all immigrants from Ghana, dressed me in a traditional Ghanaian toga, fed me peanut soup and homemade…
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Turning The Page, Onstage: One Mother’s Tragedy Inspires Hope
One scene, as the director describes it, sounds almost like a regular feature of “The Late Show With David Letterman.” But the subtext of the scene, which offers audiences a Top 10 List of “things not to say at a shiva,” is sorrow rather than comedy, the anguish that followed the gruesome 2001 murders of…
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