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Americana: The Story of Grossinger’s
Tania Grossinger’s childhood was the stuff of modern fairytales. Like a version of Kay Thomson’s Plaza Hotel-dwelling Eloise by way of “Dirty Dancing,” Grossinger grew up largely unsupervised at the famed Catskills hotel that shares her family’s name. She catalogs her exploits, many of which involve some combination of mischief and Borscht Belt celebrities, in…
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As Montana Rabbi Retires, Big Sky Jews Ponder Viability of Big Tent Synagogue
Bozeman, Mont. – As Allen Secher, the 73-year-old rabbi of Montana’s Jewish community, sat in a coffee shop here recently, a woman approached his table with a question. “Are you the rabbi?” she asked. This wasn’t the first such encounter for Secher, who is known throughout this state of roughly 900,000 people as “the” rabbi,…
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Jewish-Presbyterian Ties at ‘New Low’
Washington — Jewish outreach efforts to one of the major Protestant churches suffered a blow this month, as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) backtracked on language providing assurances against anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rhetoric within the denomination. Earlier this month, after a period of intense dialogue with Jewish groups, the church published a document that it defined…
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Shakespeare Was a Jewish Woman
NEWS ITEM: A scholar who holds numerous degrees argues that William Shakespeare was actually a Jewish woman of Italian descent, Amelia Bassano Lanier. One clue, he says, is that the Shakespearean plays contain more examples of women characters dressing up as men than in the whole English theater up to that point. A scholar now…
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New Israel Lobby Makes Picks
In its first entrance into the electoral fray, a dovish new pro-Israel group has endorsed five congressional hopefuls and a pair of incumbents. The slate, including one Republican and six Democrats, was announced Monday, June 16, by a political action committee associated with the nascent J Street project. Leaders of the group say they intend…
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Petition Fights Roadblocks That Keep Palestinians Away From Dead Sea Beaches
Haifa, Israel — For all their bitter disputes, there is at least one matter on which Israelis and Palestinians are in full accord: With a sweltering summer now under way, the time has come to indulge in a beach trip. But even this seemingly uncontroversial pleasure has been dragged into the Middle East conflict. In…
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Remembering a Yiddish Treasure
AUTHOR DIANE ACKERMAN HAILED AT KOSCIUSZKO FOUNDATION Among the attendees at the recent “Evening With Ackerman” — featuring Diane Ackerman, author of “The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story” (W.W. Norton, 2007), and held at New York’s Kosciuszko Foundation — were several Polish diplomats. The event can best be described as a Polish-Jewish historic love-fest. Ackerman…
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Knesset Hawks Move To Strip Arabic of Official Status in Israel
Haifa, Israel – In a move that is being condemned for its effect on the already fragile relations between Israel and its Arab minority, right-wing lawmakers are trying to strip Arabic of its status alongside Hebrew as an official language of the state. Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, Hebrew and Arabic have been…
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Charter School Effort Opens Rift on Civic Values
The recent announcement that mega-philanthropist Michael Steinhardt is backing an effort to bring a Hebrew-language charter school to New York — together with talk of a possible national network of similar institutions — seems certain to revive debates about whether such schools violate the separation of church and state. But the proposal raises a second,…
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Rift in Al Qaeda Raises Specter of Bin Laden Bringing Jihad to Holy Land
A recent flurry of signals from Al Qaeda leaders has fueled concerns among terrorism experts that Al Qaeda could be setting up to launch an attack on Israel. The worries about an impending attack actually grow out of the apparent struggles of the terrorist network, visible in mounting criticism from former members and leading Muslim…
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Jewish General To Pilot Evangelical-Friendly Air Force
When he was a cadet at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., in the early 1970s, Norton Schwartz did not hide his religion under his blue-and-white uniform. A member of the academy’s Jewish choir before graduating in 1973, according to one of his classmates, Schwartz has since risen up the ranks and on…
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