The New York Times has a story today quoting two unnamed “top executives at HarperCollins” who say that editor Judith Regan was “investigated and reprimanded three years ago for making an antisemitic remark at work.” According to the Times, the executives and someone else involved in the incident said that an editor complained that Regan…
After avoiding the issue for weeks, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council has issued a response to critics who say that conservative pundit Dennis Prager should be booted off the panel. Prager has been in hot water since late November, when he published an online column arguing that a Muslim congressman should not take his oath…
The controversy over Jimmy Carter’s book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” continues at a rolling boil. Today, the Anti-Defamation League issued a biting open letter that rejected the former president’s recent attempt to make peace with American Jews. Your efforts “to minimize the impact of your charge that American Jews control US Middle East policy are…
Last week, Judith Regan, the seemingly unassailable dragon lady of book publishing, was finally brought down. But after weathering more than a decade of hostility from nearly every corner of the industry — from accusations of questionable taste to serious charges of harassment and abuse — the editor was dethroned by one allegation that had…
Speculation is building that Ari Fleischer, the Whitehouse speechwriter-turned-Jewish speaking circuit regular, could end up running for Congress in 2008.
For centuries rabbis have debated whether the greatest Hanukkah miracle was the Jewish victory against the Greeks or the oil that lasted eight days. President Bush says: both.
Howard Dean released a Happy Hanukkah message over the weekend, reminding us that he does hold a candle to the RNC’s Jewish outgoing chief Ken Mehlman. Yes, Dean, who would have given the country its first Jewish First Lady, lights the menorah: “Tonight, as my family and I light the first candle of the menorah,…
Leaders of Conservative Judaism are planning to create a new ethical certification system for kosher food in response to the findings of a special commission that investigated working conditions at the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse. The five-person commission, formed by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly, was created following an investigative…
My French Vietnamese friend Sabine Huynh, a poet and professio sraeli, sent me the following e-mail: “When I told the Israeli friend who came for dinner last week that there was no storage room in our Tel Aviv apartment and that we’ll need to consult with a carpenter to find a solution to this problem,…
While gay activists and their supporters are hailing last week’s vote permitting the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis and the sanctioning of same-sex unions within Conservative Judaism, many of the movement’s far-flung branches — including most overseas branches — appear likely to reject the options. In Los Angeles, the rabbinical school of the University…
A long-simmering dispute over a controversial circumcision procedure with allegedly life-threatening risks will land like a hot potato on the desk of incoming New York state Governor Eliot Spitzer this January, after the administration of outgoing Republican Governor George Pataki reached an agreement with Hasidic leaders on precautions that medical experts say will do little…
