Along with the custom of eating apples, honey and round challah for Rosh Hashanah, many Jewish cultures have developed their own traditional holiday foods. Some Jews of Sephardic origin, for example, serve a baked fish head to symbolize “the head and not the tail,” while in Egypt, black-eyed peas and pomegranates are featured as symbols…
Just weeks before the High Holy Days, when demand for kosher food is at its peak, the kosher industry has been thrown into flux by criminal charges against what was, until recently, the largest supplier of kosher meat in America. Agriprocessors and its owners, Aaron and Sholom Rubashkin, were charged with more than 9,000 counts…
There’s a strain of Zionism peculiar to the Q train — that subway line wending its way from Manhattan’s Lower East Side and over the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn, through Hasidic Midwood, past the Russians in Brighton Beach, then terminating at Coney Island’s Stillwell Avenue stop, “the largest subway station in the world.” If Brooklyn…
A list of foods served around the world on Rosh Hashanah would contain at least as many items as there are raisins in a round challah. Jews of all nations prepare countless dishes specific to the New Year, perhaps nowhere more so than in Morocco. A country renowned for its cuisine, Morocco has Rosh Hashanah…
Haifa, Israel — As the American presidential contest between Barack Obama and John McCain heads into its final stretch, a group of leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Israel is preparing to release a statement that urges the country’s American expatriates to exercise their voting rights in November by casting absentee ballots. The statement comes on the…
In what’s sure to draw fire from Democrats and Barack Obama’s campaign, the Republican Jewish Coalition unveiled two tough new ads sure to evoke strong emotions, not to mention controversy. Under the headline, “Concerned about Barack Obama? You should be,” the ads shown below feature a series of pictures of Iranian President Ahmadinejad, other Muslim…
Retribution was swift for U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman after the Connecticut Indepedent/Democrat’s speech supporting John McCain and criticizing Barack Obama at last week’s Republican National Convention. Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call [Registration required] reports that he’s no longer welcome at the Democrats’ weekly lunches and biweekly lunches of committee chairman. Speculation remains on what will…
Israel has”ceased to exist as a campaign issue” at the moment in this year’s presidential contest, but that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. In fact, writing in Haaretz, Bradley Burston notes Israel’s influence on the election could be one military strike, one peace deal or one terrorist strike away. He outlines a half dozen ways, most…
Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who bucked the Democratic Party and endorsed President Bush over Democrat John Kerry in 2004, has no regrets about that decision. Kerry did not fully understood the need to support Israel at the time, he says. “That is not an issue in this election,” Koch writes in a statement…
From Muslim imams to conservative rabbis and practically every faith in between, religion and religious leaders were front and center at the recent Republican and Democratic political conventions. Expect more of the same in the coming two months as Barack Obama and John McCain and their political parties court the religious vote. But is this…
TOVAH FELDSHUH PORTRAYS POLISH RESCUER IN NEW PLAY, “IRENA’S VOW” “We in America tend only to study the end of the Jewish tragedy… I saw the beginnings,” Tovah Feldshuh told the guests at the August 13 reception at the Polish Consulate in New York. It was a reference to her recent visit to Ukraine, Lithuania…
