In the early hours before sunrise on February 24, 1924, Harry Scheurman sat awake in his tenement apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He had returned earlier that night from a reunion ball for émigrés from his Eastern European hometown, and he took out his diary in the hope of preserving the excitement of the…
When my father was 7, he contracted polio. In a few days he lost all feeling in his legs. He was confined to bed for six months. His second grade teacher came to visit, bringing a record of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and a hardcover of “Alice in Wonderland.” (Thus began a love of great music…
Gozali will compete in the under-87-kilogram division
‘It’s your duty as a Jew to stay here in Kiev.” Oh boy, thinks Tolya Epshtein, oh boy. So many Jews have left for Israel and America already, half the Jews he knows. And now his wife wants to join the outflow. So, Tolya came to the synagogue where Jews gather after services to gossip…
Yesterday saw the announcement that Tevi David Troy, an Orthodox Jew who currently serves as the Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, will be nominated as the Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services. Troy previously served as the White House Liaison to the Jewish community. The White House’s announcement was quickly answered…
A New York Times editorial urging enhanced congressional campaign-donation disclosure rules begins by stating that “Congress is still haunted by the black hat and easy-money grin of Jack Abramoff…” It’s worth noting that the Forward cracked the mysteryof this black hat that is, apparently, still haunting Capitol Hill way back in January 2006: It’s a…
While the chattering class continues to ask whether Obama is truly pro-Israel, two renowned Jewish writers are busy raising money for him. Ayelet Waldman and husband Michael Chabon – whose latest novel, “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” reimagines Alaska as the homeland of the Jewish people – have recently gone public with their love for Senator…
Washington – The afternoon before Bernard Rapoport was scheduled to introduce Senator Hillary Clinton to an audience of well-heeled Jewish activists and donors, he turned his attention to her most imposing 2008 rival and had a backroom chuckle at her expense. Rapoport — a former insurance executive from Waco, Texas, who at nearly 90 years…
American policy toward the increasingly authoritarian regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin has ignited a fierce quarrel inside one of the fastest-growing and most influential movements in Judaism, Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism. Chabad officials in Russia and the United States have recently staked out opposing positions on a decades-old American law, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which restricted U.S.-Soviet…
Four days after her brother went on the deadliest shooting spree in American history, Sun-Kyung Cho released a statement on her family’s behalf, expressing anguish and apologies to the victims’ loved ones. “Our family is so very sorry for my brother’s unspeakable actions,” she wrote. Such statements from the family of the attacker have become…
Baltimore – A series of exposés on sexual abuse at a well-known yeshiva is roiling the Baltimore Jewish community and inflaming the already strained relations between the local Jewish newspaper and the city’s sizable Orthodox population. The controversy revolves around allegations in the Baltimore Jewish Times that the late principal of the Talmudical Academy, Rabbi…
