The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives has been a thorn in the side of church-state watchdogs since its creation in 2001, but when a network of civil rights organizations urged Congress to investigate the office last week, a number of liberal Jewish groups declined to join. Last Friday, the Coalition Against Religious…
Washington – Facing the growing influence of Christian Zionists in the United States, the dwindling Christian minority in the Palestinian territories is making a renewed push to capture American hearts and minds. A delegation of Palestinian Christian mayors came to Washington last week on a lobbying mission, during which they argued the Palestinian cause. It…
The arrest of 13 American yeshiva students in Russia last week has sparked a vigorous war of words within Russia’s most powerful Jewish organization. The students, all said to be between the ages of 18 and 22, were arrested last Friday in the provincial city of Rostov, roughly 1,000 miles south of Moscow, and charged…
Some of the biggest names in American Jewish philanthropy are calling for fundamental changes to the organization that helped found Israel. The calls for reform came in a draft proposal that was circulated during a board of governors meeting of the Jewish Agency for Israel, the quasi-governmental organization devoted to Israeli immigration and social services….
Los Angeles – At the end of a long day of picketing, a top leader at the writers’ union scrambled to recite his afternoon prayers on a side street just around the corner from Culver Studios, where he had been marching and chanting union slogans for hours, his yarmulke in full view. David N. Weiss,…
Several prominent Orthodox rabbis appeared at a rally Saturday outside the house of another Orthodox rabbi, joining league with protesters who waved signs and chanted, “Stop the abuse.” The rabbis were gathered in support of agunot — Jewish wives who have been refused a Jewish divorce by their former husbands. The protest took place outside…
Washington – The highest ranking Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders from the Holy Land made a groundbreaking statement of support this week for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The Muslim sheiks in charge of Jerusalem’s holy places met with Israel’s chief rabbis and with the leaders of the major Christian denominations to present a paper that…
‘Exodus’ Re-enacted As part of Israel’s celebration of the 60th anniversary of its independence, a chartered ship re-enacted the voyage of the infamous refugee ship “Exodus,” carrying 300 passengers to Haifa from Cyprus last week, including passengers who sailed on the original ship. The original “Exodus” sailed from Marseilles, France, in 1947, with more than…
Mazel Tov: Celebrities’ Bar and Bat Mitzvah Memories By Jill Rappaport Photographs by Linda Solomon Simon & Schuster, 176 pages, $25. Most American Jews have at least one good bar mitzvah story to tell… even celebrities. Actor Harvey Fierstein’s drama queen grandmother faked a heart attack during his ceremony (he kept on singing the Hebrew…
The World in a City: Traveling the Globe Through the Neighborhoods of the New New York By Joseph Berger Ballantine Books, 288 pages, $25.95. Joseph Berger’s new book, “The World in a City,” will make you hungry. In any case, it made me hungry. The book can be summed up neatly by its subtitle: “Traveling…
The Museum of the City of New York presents a series of events in conjunction with the exhibition The Jewish Daily Forward: Embracing an Immigrant Community. Ruth Westheimer will discuss the Bintel Brief, the Forward’s recently revived advice column, with Forward Web editor Daniel Treiman; Broadway producer Stewart Lane, New Yorker film critic David Denby,…
