In the wake of a massive raid at the country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, kosher authorities acknowledge that they have no contingency plan that could replace the company’s kosher meat production. Since the raid at Agriprocessors slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, the company has struggled to ramp up production in a factory that has supplied more than…
For those who have been wondering for months if and when Jewish Clinton loyalists would throw their weight behind Barack Obama, let June 4 be known, henceforth, as the date for coming out from behind the furniture. One day after Obama, the 46-year old freshman senator from Illinois, completed his long, hard slog from a…
Olmert Takes a Break Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, under fire at home for a deepening corruption scandal, left behind his political trouble in Israel for a two-day visit to hear Senators Barack Obama, John McCain and Hillary Clinton speak to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Saying he was “deeply impressed” by all the candidates’…
You could call it New York City’s longest-running soiree. For more than 60 years, a German-speaking salon has gathered each Wednesday, attracting artists, intellectuals and literary types — Jews and non-Jews, mostly to the left of center, who’ve sought to maintain their ties to Germanic culture despite disaffection for the political extremism of the 1930s….
The look I received from the proprietor of Heichal Judaica, A bookstore in Brooklyn’s heavily Orthodox Midwood district, was understandably puzzled, bordering on suspicious. After all, my yarmulke may have said yes-yes, but my jeans and sneakers said no-no. As it turns out, I was in the market for some frum Jewish entertainment and wanted…
Four Israeli films that focus on personal identity and sexuality are presented in the Faigele Film Festival, the JCC in Manhattan’s third annual LGBTQ movie series. The program opens with Orna Ben Dor’s “Mom, I Didn’t Kill Your Daughter” (2007), which tells parallel stories of two men who discover that they were actually born female….
In California, judges rule That same-sex marriages are cool. A girl may now a female wed, Two males may share a marriage-bed. It’s legal, on the up-and-up, So drain the brimming loving-cup! This novelty connubial Is all quite constitutional. The justices from bench explain Anatomy is not germane. What counts and matters, they enthuse, Is…
Los Angeles – Mendel Slavin went to work as a chaplain in a San Diego prison in 2006. A Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic rabbi from the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, he was one of about a dozen Jewish chaplains serving California’s fractional Jewish inmate population at the time. But in the two years since then, that…
WHOOPI GOLDBERG AMONG HONOREES AT ALBERT EINSTEIN LUNCHEON This is the last place I thought I would be… Thank you for shining a light on me,” said Whoopi Goldberg an honoree at the May 5 Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s 54th annual Spirit of Achievement Luncheon. Donny Deutsch, host of CNBC hit show “The Big Idea…
Mega-philanthropist Michael Steinhardt is giving a big bump to the effort to create a national network of publicly funded Hebrew schools by putting his money behind an effort to open a Hebrew-language charter school in New York City. A group of individuals with financial backing from the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life is planning to…
From the avalanche of articles and commentaries published by mainstream media outlets in recent weeks, one might easily get the impression that Barack Obama is in trouble with Jewish voters. As the Illinois senator — now the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee — turns his attention to November, the national media has closely followed his overtures…
