When I have people over for Shabbat dinner during the winter I always make some kind of kugel as a side dish. But in the summer, nobody wants a warm kugel, so I have to come up with a nice rotation of cold salads that don’t bore me to death. This one I got from…
Haifa, Israel — However it may affect American public opinion, Barack Obama’s midsummer Middle East campaign tour had a powerful impact on the nations he visited — though not in the ways that most observers anticipated. Israelis, many of whom viewed Obama with suspicion because of his rumored coolness toward the Jewish state, awoke Wednesday,…
The Bush administration’s recent diplomatic overtures toward Iran have unleashed a torrent of criticism from neoconservatives and have fueled concerns in Israel that Washington is shelving the option of using military force against Tehran’s nuclear facilities. After months of rejecting the possibility of negotiating with Iran until it suspends nuclear enrichment, the administration sent a…
After decades of false sightings, the Simon Wiesenthal Center claims it is closing in on Aribert Heim, a former physician nicknamed the “Butcher of Mauthausen” because of the torture experiments he conducted on Jewish prisoners at the concentration camp in Austria. According to Efraim Zuroff, director of the center’s office in Jerusalem, a recent visit…
Phoenix — At first glance, Mayor Phil Gordon’s office in downtown Phoenix looks like that of any other mayor, replete with photos of his kids and a sweeping view of the city. In the case of Arizona’s capital, that means rolling desert hills. But in an otherwise sparsely decorated workspace, one detail stands out: a…
Picking up the phone at 4:30 in the afternoon, Shmarya Rosenberg answered in a voice still bleary from sleep. He explained that he was just napping after having blogged the whole night, and most of the morning. “It’s hard to do one of these blogs,” Rosenberg said. “It owns you. It’s terrible. If I had…
Is all fair in love and PR? Some public relations industry observers say that 5WPR, the firm that represents the embattled kosher meat company Agriprocessors, crossed an ethical line when an employee apparently impersonated Agriprocessors critics online. The controversy over 5WPR is, in the context of Jewish affairs, an odd spin-off of the ongoing saga…
Los Angeles — In a surprise turnabout, troubles in the real-estate market have scuttled a controversial plan to sell a beloved Jewish summer camp in Northern California to a Christian group, reviving the possibility that the camp might remain in Jewish hands. The facility, Camp Swig, is one of the oldest summer camps of Reform…
Peyes swing from under Yankees caps, and players sling Yiddish jeers from the outfield, when the Stormers take the hardtop for their Sunday games at Brooklyn’s McCarren Park. The teams of Brooklyn’s Greenpoint Softball League reflect the boro’s inimitable patchwork of cultures, and the Stormers — with a hardworking 3-23 record — represent Williamsburg’s sizable…
Most of the time, I am self-righteous and self-congratulatory about my choice to raise children in the city. I pontificate about the myriad cuuuuultural opportunities and diveeeeersity; I boast about being able to walk everywhere; I coo about living in a tenement just like the ones our huddled-mass Jewish ancestors yearned to escape. I am…
Washington — Senator Joseph Lieberman recently got a double dose of Jewish folk songs. On July 21, a day camp girls’ choir at a South Florida synagogue greeted him with “Hevenu Shalom Aleichem.” The next day he heard exactly the same song, only this time it was performed by a young, enthusiastic Christian group that…
