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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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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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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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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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