‘The Counterfeiters” purports to tell the story of how Jews at Sachsenhausen concentration camp produced near-perfect forgeries of the British pound for the Nazis. But be forewarned: Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitsky’s 2008 Academy Award winner for best foreign film lacks a great deal of the drama inherent in the real-life story. That’s the word from…
I’m having a crisis of conscience about kashrut. (For some reason I want to write “krisis of konscience about kashrut,” because it sounds vaguely like a hardcore band that would play headbanging songs about kale. But I suppose fans would want to call them by their initials, and that would really not be kool.) Here’s…
Yesterday, I had brunch at my friend’s apartment. It was a steamy Sunday morning – the kind where it could rain any second and your hair (or at least my hair) becomes simultaneously flat, frizzy, and full of weirdly-placed curls. French toast and eggs seemed too heavy for such a morning. But luckily, at some…
As the presidential candidates prepare to compete for religious voters this November, some preachers on the Christian right are vowing to test longstanding tax rules that inhibit politicking from the pulpit. The Alliance Defense Fund — a legal outfit launched by James Dobson and other prominent conservatives in the mid-1990s — has recruited 50 pastors…
UPDATE: Rabbi Gilles Bernheim was elected France’s chief rabbi on Sunday. For more, click here. The election of France’s chief rabbi is generally a quiet affair decided by insiders. This year, thanks to the freedoms of the Internet, the campaign has turned into a raucous, innuendo-filled cyber-battle featuring Facebook pages, video postings — some of…
Washington – As peace talks between Israel and Syria picked up momentum this past week, both Jerusalem and Damascus signaled a willingness to consider policy changes that could quarantine the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah. On June 18, Israel agreed to open discussions on the future of Shebaa Farms, a disputed piece of land on Israel’s…
When two progressively minded Orthodox rabbinical students sat down last week at a Manhattan kosher dairy restaurant with four Lubavitch businessmen, radically different segments of the Orthodox world collided, and sparks flew. The rabbinical students and a young rabbi who accompanied them were from Uri L’Tzedek, a liberal Orthodox activist group organizing a boycott of…
York, Pa. – The entrance lobby of the York Jewish Community Center in York, Pa., is decorated with all the traditional trappings of a JCC: paintings of Israel, a Holocaust memorial sculpture and a glass case with Judaica for sale. Yet, during a recent visit the center proved itself distinctly lacking in one key department:…
Dov Hikind, a grandfather of Orthodox Jewish politics in New York, appears to be turning his back on some of his closest political kin with his endorsements this season. Hikind, a Democratic state assemblyman from the 48th district of the Boro Park section of Brooklyn, has spent years overseeing the work of younger Orthodox politicians,…
NEW YORK REAL ESTATE DYNAMO JACKY TEPLITZKY HONORED BY PAJAMA PROGRAM “I grew up in a low-income, middle-class area in [Santiago] Chile,” said Manhattan real estate maven Jacky Teplitzky, recipient of the Sweet Dreams Award at the Pajama Program’s May 2 luncheon, held at the Hotel Pierre. Her family moved to Israel, where Teplitzky served…
The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring, a century-old fraternal organization devoted to the furtherance of Yiddish language and culture, recently appointed its first female executive director. Ann Toback, formerly the assistant executive director of the Writers Guild of America, East, was installed June 9. Originally a socialist organization devoted to safeguarding the rights of immigrant workers, the…
