An influential ultra-Orthodox organization is putting new muscle behind efforts to shape education policy at the state level. Agudath Israel of America, a New-York based advocacy group for ultra-Orthodox Jews, has recently created a new position, national director of government affairs. The new job is intended to create better coordination among the group’s 28 national…
Months after emerging from a lengthy battle with one of its former leaders, the World Jewish Congress is now embroiled in a feud with its Israeli branch regarding a dispute over control of the organization’s Jerusalem office. Members of the Israeli branch say that the New York-based secretary general of the WJC, Stephen Herbits, recently…
A conservative pundit popular on the Jewish dinner circuit has aroused a nationwide controversy by rejecting the right of a newly elected Muslim congressman to be sworn in using a Quran. In a November 28 column published on the Web site Townhall.com, radio talkshow host and syndicated columnist Dennis Prager wrote that using Islam’s sacred…
Rose Mattus, a longtime Jewish philanthropist and one of the creators of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, died November 28 in Westwood, N.J., at the age of 90. Mattus grew up in Poland and moved to Brooklyn with her family in 1921. She married a distant cousin, Reuben, in 1936, and together they started making ice cream,…
Every Tuesday morning in the village of Chelm, Reb Cantor the merchant and Rabbi Yohon Abrahms the schoolteacher (and mashgiach) went for an early morning walk. They met in the village square when it was still black out, squinting up at the sky as the sun crept up inch by inch over the Black Forest,…
Hanukkah wouldn’t be complete without a mischievous blue goblin, a conniving, busybody neighbor, a boy named Jakob and a couple of magic dreidels. The Jewish Theatre of the South presents “The Magic Dreidels,” a family show written by Jenna Zark and based on the book by Eric Kimmel. Set on the first night of Hanukkah…
From MySpace to YouTube to eBay, it seems everyone is tuned into the Internet these days. So it’s surprising that it took quite so long for profit-minded members of the tribe to recognize the shortage of online spots to shop for that perfect Hanukkah gift. But in recent years, a slew of Web sites have…
Does your sister really need another set of scented candles? Doesn’t your father have enough ties? Forget the old standbys! Here’s a collection of brand-new finds that should satisfy even the most persnickety of relations. Tuned In Yuk it up with “George Burns: The TV Specials Collection,” a newly released four-DVD boxed set that features…
More than one Jewish summer camp director has a jocular placard in his office displaying this half-verse from Psalm 27: “Though a camp be encamped against me, my heart will not fear….” Okay, true, that’s a somewhat wooden translation of the verse, which might be more clearly rendered: “Should an army besiege me, my heart…
Former New York City Mayor Edward Koch has called for Dennis Prager to resign or be removed from United States Holocaust Memorial Council, in response to the pundit’s recent insistence that a Muslim congressman should not be sworn in using a Quran. “There is no question that Dennis Prager is a bigot who ought to…
A prominent Middle East scholar, Kenneth W. Stein, announced his resignation as a fellow of Emory University’s Carter Center, in response to former President Jimmy Carter’s new book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” Stein did not give the book’s title in the e-mail announcing his resignation, saying that it was “a title too inflammatory to even…
