Los Angeles – When Israel launches its 60th anniversary celebrations across America, the Los Angeles ceremony will be led not by one of this city’s many boldface-named Jews but by its Mexican-American mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. The choice is unsurprising to those familiar with the 55-year-old politician, who enjoys an unusually strong connection to Jews and…
Washington – Fearing a sudden change in American policy, Jewish victims of Palestinian terrorism are lobbying the Bush administration and Congress to ensure the enforcement of lawsuits against the Palestinian Authority that award them compensation. The intense lobbying effort comes amid signs of a shift in the position of the Bush administration, which so far…
Washington – One of the foreign-policy experts who has advised Barack Obama’s campaign on Middle East issues is striking out against critics who have used him to criticize the Illinois senator’s views on Israel. Robert Malley, a former special assistant to President Bill Clinton on Arab-Israeli affairs, told the Forward that the attacks on him…
Jerusalem – Lior Brand, a Tel Aviv businessman in his thirties, has some ideas about death — specifically, his own. “I don’t lead a religious life, and neither do my parents or my wife, but we like ceremony,” Brand said. “I want a ceremony that reflects the way I lead my life. I feel as…
Washington – Jewish communities worldwide went on heightened alert this week, following threats by Hezbollah to avenge the assassination last week of Imad Mugniyah, a longtime senior leader of the terrorist group. In the United States, the FBI sent out alerts to field offices and law enforcement agencies nationwide to increase awareness of the heightened…
Toronto – The imprisonment of a Canadian Jewish businessman in India has become a surprising cause celebre for the leaders of Montreal’s Jewish community. The imprisoned man is Saul Itzhayek, who has both Canadian and Israeli citizenship. Itzhayek was convicted and sentenced to three years last May for entering India from Nepal with an expired…
Rabbi William Berkowitz, a longtime spiritual leader of a major New York City synagogue, died February 3. He was 83. Berkowitz served as senior rabbi at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun between 1950 and 1984. He was also well-known for creating the Dialogue Forum, an innovative series of public conversations with such figures as Martin Luther King,…
The Moscow Yiddish Theater: Art on Stage in the Time of Revolution By Benjamin Harshav, translated by Benjamin Harshav and Barbara Harshav Yale University Press, 248 pages, $45. In 1992, the Guggenheim Museum collaborated with scholar Benjamin Harshav on an exhibit of Marc Chagall’s legendary set designs for the Moscow State Yiddish Art Theater, known…
You don’t have to be Spanish to study Spanish. You don’t have to be Chinese to study Chinese. But, do you have to be Jewish to study Yiddish? “It has come up in class at the National Yiddish Book Center,” said Amanda Lineweber, an 18-year-old Smith College student. “People think if there is no cultural…
Folk singer Gerry Tenney breaks into song midway through an interview: “Ze ikh a royte tir ikh vill es farbn schvartz….” Sound familiar? Perhaps not in Yiddish, but in English: “I see a red door and I want it painted black….” Yes, the Rolling Stones classic is only the latest to which Tenney, 66, has…
Aleksander Astraukh, editor of a 50,000-word Belarusian-Yiddish lexicon currently on press in Minsk, Belarus, admits that his is “not a normal dictionary.” A bridge between two languages equidistant from the mainstream, the book includes in its entries illustrations, idioms, etymologies and citations from the literature of both tongues, which have historically shared large swaths of…
