Los Angeles – Growing up in New Haven, Conn., just across the street from Senator Joe Lieberman, Adeena Bleich never thought it was out of the ordinary for an Orthodox Jew to run for political office. Now, the 30-year-old West Coast transplant is herself running for office in Los Angeles, angling to become the city’s…
ARTIST LEROY NEIMAN HELPS LAUNCH AN ARTS CENTER “I feel like I am in Paris,” said a guest arriving at the West 67th Street high-ceilinged, paintings-filled atelier of artist Leroy Neiman for the March 24 cocktail launch of the Arts Horizon LeRoy Neiman Center. Among the guests were Neil Sedaka, Michael Feinstein, Charles “Chip” Fisher (son…
United Nations -Libya’s place on the United Nations Security Council never promised to be a smooth ride, but the North African nation’s brashness since joining the council last year has become a major headache for the world body. Last January, Libya took its place on the 15-member council for a two-year term. While the United…
Haifa, Israel – Since it launched 12 years ago, Al Jazeera has been one of the few media outlets to regularly present Israeli representatives to the Arab world, but this rare open line of communication is now closed. The Qatar-based station’s coverage of Israel’s operations in Gaza during February and March hit a nerve with…
After watching the presidential race unfold elsewhere for months, Indiana’s Jewish Democrats could be basking in their political moment in the sun — if only they could stop cringing. On the one hand, the arrival of the state’s first competitive Democratic presidential primary in decades gives Jewish liberals a rare shot at relevancy in a…
In June 2006, Avner Stepak, an investment banker and budding philanthropist, invited his friend Zvika Arran over to his house to watch a basketball game. Arran had an idea for a new venture, and Stepak told him he had 30 seconds before the game started to describe it. Arran laid out his idea: a new…
Esta Salzman, the last actress to be part of New York City’s Second Avenue musical theater scene during its heyday in the 1920s and ’30s, died April 23 at the age of 94. I met Esta in 1999, when our mutual friend, the Yiddish tenor Seymour Rexite, brought her to see my translation of “God…
Jewish students at a midwestern university are accusing the administration of ignoring antisemitic incidents. Jewish students at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks say the university ignored weeks of complaints about antisemitic incidents on campus until the news was reported in local newspapers. One Jewish student has moved off-campus to escape harassment, and…
Washington – Bahrain is expected to appoint a member of its tiny Jewish community as ambassador to the United States, the small Persian Gulf state’s top diplomatic posting. The expected nomination of Houda Ezra Nonoo would be historic in several respects: She would not only become the first Jew to represent a Muslim state, but…
Washington – As hints of peace talks have emerged recently from Israel and Syria, the Bush administration appears to have shifted away from its long-held opposition to Jerusalem engaging in talks with the Assad regime in Damascus. Earlier this month, both Israel and Syria took the unusual step of publicly confirming that they had been…
In the history of the State of Israel, the 1990s were the time of the Palestinians. The decade began with a Palestinian intifada and ended with a second Palestinian intifada, deadlier and more vicious than the first. Between the two waves of violence, Israel was swept like a roller coaster from the heights of euphoria…
