Alibag, India – In most other Jewish communities, Magen Aboth would be considered an understated synagogue. But here in Alibag — a sleepy, dusty town on the west coast of India where one- and two-room huts with thatched roofs dominate the landscape — it’s a magnificent, proud building. Two stories tall and trimmed in graceful…
New leadership was supposed to calm the long-running feuds at the World Jewish Congress, but the past is being brought forward again by a set of lawsuits filed this week against a former top official at the organization. The WJC and its former president, Edgar Bronfman, filed separate civil suits in New York State Supreme…
Until recently, the men and women responsible for leading Jewish life in Russia have avoided biting the hand that feeds them. The hand, in this case, is the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a New York-based charity that is responsible for much of the Jewish development in the former Soviet Union since the fall of…
The primary Jewish charity in Russia is being sued by a former employee who says he was fired after raising questions about a business deal in Moscow. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which is funded by American Jewish federations, is in Jerusalem court against Yoram Abergel. An employee of the JDC for 18 years…
An effort by the Bush administration to tighten regulation of a special visa program for religious workers is drawing fire from a variety of faith-based groups, who argue that the move could amount to a violation of religious freedom. In April, after reports of widespread fraud in its “temporary religious workers” visa program, the Department…
Four years ago, I received a burned CD copy of an unreleased album. Hastily written on the disc in black marker was the band’s name, The Marcus Brothers. The CD contained an album-worth of explicitly Orthodox rock. It was something of an underground Chabad secret, the group’s core members two real-life brothers, one of them…
Jerusalem – For as long as Israel has existed, the Jewish Agency for Israel has had a government monopoly on bringing new immigrants into the country, but new legislation is set to change that. This coming Sunday, the Israeli Cabinet is expected to approve a decision to allocate 19 million shekels to two privately founded…
Being a Zionist on an American college campus can get lonely. On one side, there are overwhelmingly liberal campuses, teeming with student groups who equate Zionism with racism. On the other, there is the Republican right, which often qualifies its love for Israel with hints of evangelism, or ties it to a right-wing social agenda….
I watched Josie watch the stage. Lucy was entering Narnia for the first time. The furs in the wardrobe were becoming trees. The mothballs, crunching beneath her feet, were becoming snow. Suddenly she was in a strange new land, and there was a faun. Josie was just as transported. In this children’s theater production of…
California Congressman Adam Schiff is adding his voice to the chorus of opposition taking the national ADL to task for failing to unequivocally label the World War-era mass killings of Armenians at the hands of the Turks as genocide. “I would like to see the ADL unequivocally recognize the Armenian genocide,” Schiff said in an…
THE MANY GOODBYES FOR DEPARTING ISRAELI AMBASSADOR ARYE MEKEL “None has served with such personal modesty and clarity of purpose,” said UJA executive vice president John Ruskay of Israel’s departing consul general, Arye Mekel, at the joint UJA-Federation of New York/Jewish Community Relations Council of New York’s July l7 leave-taking reception. “[His was] the more…
