Washington — A New York businessman who is at the center of a corruption scandal that brought down Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is now facing an FBI investigation into alleged money laundering and tax evasion. A federal grand jury was convened in Brooklyn last month and has begun subpoenaing witnesses and documents involved in the…
Washington — Presidential historians and convention observers believe this year’s Democratic convention will be the first time that a rabbi gives an invocation before the presidential nominee’s acceptance speech since the advent of modern American political conventions nearly a century ago. Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, will be…
For the members of a century-old Jewish fraternal society, the organization’s breakup has literally turned into a fight over graves. The Rohatyner Young Men’s Society is one of the last of the landsmanschaften, benefit societies formed at the turn of the past century by groups of townsfolk who had emigrated from Eastern Europe. Thousands of…
Los Angeles — Four recovering addicts celebrated their sobriety “birthdays” on a recent Friday, in keeping with an Alcoholics Anonymous tradition. But the celebration occurred during a Sabbath service, and the prayer expressing gratitude for recovery from addiction was recited alongside the Shema. The venue was Beit T’Shuvah, so far the country’s only Jewish residential…
Three years ago, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf came to New York, shook then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s hand and delivered a keynote address to an American Jewish group, fueling hope that the second largest Muslim country in the world and the Jewish state were on their way to establishing formal relations. Last week, Musharraf…
Los Angeles — With financial woes having already decimated the ranks of Southern California’s Jewish community centers, the crisis has moved northward. The JCC of the East Bay, located in Berkeley, Calif., is in the midst of crippling financial woes that in recent weeks have forced layoffs of half its staff. While the JCC —…
On his path to the Democratic convention, Barack Obama had a complicated push-and-pull relationship with the Jewish community. When he was an upstart politician in Chicago, local Jews were some of his earliest supporters, and Obama likes to tell Jewish audiences that in some of his early races, he was criticized for being too close…
FROM THE MOUTHS OF PRESIDENTS WHOSE WRITERS’ WORDS MAKE HISTORY “Why speechwriters?” posited Robert Schlesinger, U.S. News & World Report opinion deputy assistant managing editor and author of the recent book “White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters” (Simon & Schuster), to the select gathering at the July 15 reception at the Roosevelt House Public…
Sue me, I’m a little late to the “Yay, the 2nd Avenue Deli is back!” party. But yay, the 2nd Avenue Deli is back! Party! Everyone knows the story. The 2nd Avenue Deli opened in 1954. The pastrami and corned beef were sublime. The place shut in 2005 after a rent dispute. Last year, when…
At the age of 12, Jennifer Traig was convinced she was dying of breast cancer. Certain that she was suffering from her first heart attack, at age 18, Traig had diagnosed herself with countless diseases, including meningitis, lupus and multiple sclerosis, before she had even graduated from college. In her brazen memoir, “Well Enough Alone:…
Growing up in a sleepy town in Connecticut, writer Esther Cohen learned from her family the art of conversation as a competitive sport. “The main leisure activities they did were eating and talking,” Cohen told the Forward. “So those are the two things I pretty much know how to do.” In her new book “Don’t…
