After receiving death threats from a Shi’ite extremist group, some 45 members of the tiny Jewish community in Yemen were forced to flee their homes in a northern village this month and were staying in a hotel in a nearby city, according to press reports from the region. A leader of the Jewish refugees, Dawoud…
New York’s junior senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is expected to snare the lion’s share of the Jewish community’s substantial political donations in the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Democratic activists and operatives said Clinton will pull in large quantities of cash among Jewish donors not only because of what they described as her…
A prestigious Israeli institute, responding to a flap that erupted last summer when it failed to include women at a high-powered parley on the future of the Jewish people, has appointed three women to its board of directors. The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a Jerusalem-based policy consortium, added to its board Morlie Levin, executive…
Lisa Goldberg, president of the Charles H. Revson Foundation, died Monday of a brain aneurysm. She was 54. From 2003 until her death, Goldberg had been president of Revson, which makes grants in the area of urban affairs, education, Jewish philanthropy and education, and biomedical research policy. “We are devastated by the loss of our…
Fagaras, Romania – M. Emenescu Street is a well-kept blacktop with a natural-food store and a Generali Insurance office, but this tidy scene is interrupted by a forlorn plot of real estate that houses Fagaras’s lone synagogue. Built in 1848, the synagogue today is a relic — a two-story gray structure surrounded by weeds, its…
Poor Maxine. Somehow she makes it into newsprint and pixels so much less often than Josie does. I’m nuts about her, I swear, but because I’ve already been through all her developmental stages once, I think they make less interesting copy. (For instance, I was entranced when baby Josie pretended to pluck and eat little…
If you thought Passover was the only holiday with a Seder, you’re in for a surprise. In the 16th century, Rabbi Isaac Luria and other kabbalists in Tzfat created a Seder framework for Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish New Year of Trees. This year, Tu B’Shvat falls on February 3, and the holiday’s Seder involves eating…
Check out The New Shul’s Tu B’Shvat Jam and explore your relationship with the environment. Experience live music and poetry, performed by the talented members of The New Shul, and enjoy special foods and wine. The New Shul, 272 W. 10th St.; Feb. 2, 7 p.m. (212-284-6773 or www.newshul.org) … Hazon and the JCC in…
The story of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach is told in “The House of Love and Prayer,” a new musical presented by the National Yiddish Theatre and produced by Jeremy Chess and Joel Kahn. Performed in English, Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian (with supertitles), the show focuses on Carlebach’s life from his childhood in prewar Europe to his…
Five times in this week’s portion, Bo, the reader, is told to tell the story of the Exodus to a family audience. But who exactly is to be told? The word ben (offspring, traditionally son) functions as something of a refrain in the Hebrew. At its beginning (Exodus 10:2), midsection (12:24, 26) and conclusion (13:8,…
Michael Ciresi – a wealthy trial lawyer who narrowly lost Minnesota’s Democratic Senate primary in 2000 – told the Forward that is he “very strongly leaning” towards making another run in 2008. As we reported this week in our pages, the 2008 Minnesota race is shaping up to be an exciting affair: Comedian-turned-pundit Al Franken…
