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Labor Woes Hit Memorial to East Side Wage Slaves
A few mornings a week, Tal Bar-Zemer dons a black floor-length skirt, white blouse, pinafore and lace-up leather boots in preparation for her job as a costumed interpreter at Manhattan’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum. On any given afternoon, she spends six to eight hours sitting in an overheated, cramped apartment, talking — in character…
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Shrine of False Messiah in Turkey May Be Razed
Far away from the eyes of the Jewish mainstream, in modern-day Turkey there live hundreds, if not thousands, of crypto-Jews — and today, one of their most sacred shrines is in danger. This is the hidden, fascinating tale of the doenmeh, descendants of the faithful followers of the 17th-century false messiah Sabbetai Tzvi, who converted…
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Jewish Iraq War Veteran Directs Anti-Bush Effort
This week, the anti-war group VoteVets.org took to the airwaves with a television advertising campaign aimed at several vulnerable Republican incumbents. The ads feature John Batiste and Paul Eaton, two U.S. Army veterans who served as major generals in Iraq, criticizing President Bush’s handling of the war. Off-camera, the man behind the half-million dollar ad…
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America-Backed Arabic T.V. Network Comes Under Fire on Capitol Hill
Washington — America’s fight for the hearts and minds of Arab television viewers throughout the Middle East is raising hackles on Capitol Hill. A bipartisan group of nine members of the House of Representatives is calling for the dismissal of Larry Register, the vice president of news at the American-funded Alhurra television network. The lawmakers,…
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Bush Appears To Side With Israel on New Initiative
Washington — With momentum building for the Arab League’s Middle East plan, the Bush administration appears to be siding with Israel over how to proceed. The initiative — which was first presented by the Saudis, later adopted by the Arab League in 2002 in Beirut and then reaffirmed in Riyadh two months ago — calls…
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Rabbis Move Ahead With New Certification Plan
The Conservative synagogue movement is moving ahead with its plans to create a new ethically based certification system for kosher food in response to concerns about working conditions at the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse. At the annual meeting of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, early this month, the gathering voted to endorse the five-person committee…
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In the Wilderness of Ink
Certain scholars believe that the Redactor added a single sentence to this week’s Torah portion. What are they doing, Uncle? It’s another census, chickpea. Why? You ask a lot of questions, Phinehas. Will you give a half-shekel, too? Will they count you, too, this time? Has someone been teasing you again? No. Yes. No, Uncle….
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Back to the Land
Referring to my column of two weeks ago on the expression am ha’aretz, Jonathan Sarna, Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, writes that “too much attention to the word am-ha’aretz seems to have badly affected your grammatical sense. As you surely know, the Hebrew plural of am-ha’aretz…
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Reagan’s Top Diplomat Honored at Gala
“YOUR PLACE IN JEWISH HISTORY IS SECURE,” WIESEL TELLS GEORGE SHULTZ , HONOREE AT AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY DINNER “Israel owes you. The Jewish people owe you,” said Elie Wiesel as he presented the Emma Lazarus Statue of Liberty Award to George Shultz — secretary of state under President Reagan — at the American Jewish…
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The House That Ruth Built
Shavuot, the holiday that marks God’s giving of the Torah to the Jewish people, is punctuated at many synagogues by studying religious texts throughout the night and by the reading of the Book of Ruth on the second day of the holiday. The standard view is that these practices serve to recall and re-enact the…
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Nature Calls: Lessons of the Loo
I believe I last wrote about poop back in July. So it’s high time to talk about it again. (Just be thankful my children are aging out of the Effluvium Years. Honestly, I have no idea what I’ll write about anymore.) When we last discussed toilet training, 21-month-old Maxine was quaking in terror of a…
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