The top council of American Jewish community leaders is planning a first-ever visit to the United Arab Emirates this February, the Forward has learned. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations will visit Abu Dhabi and Dubai and conduct meetings with government officials. Though details of the visit have not yet been finalized,…
In what was billed as a “historic” challenge, five major Israeli bodies, including the government, signed a covenant Sunday to fight together for increased money and power within the international body that negotiates post-Holocaust claims, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The heads of two Israel Holocaust survivor organizations — Israel’s national Holocaust…
In the early 1990s I met a Holocaust survivor, Norman Salsitz, who possessed the most amazing powers of memory I’ve ever encountered. Learning that my mother had grown up in the same town as he had in pre-Holocaust Poland, he asked me her name. When I told him, he remembered very vividly the “royte Chana,”…
Michigan State University announced recently plans to offer a series of diversity training sessions for faculty and students, focusing on Islam-related subjects. The announcement came on the heels of an October 3 meeting between members of the university administration and the Muslim Student Union. The Muslim group, in concert with the Michigan chapter of the…
Old Jewish Comedians By Drew Friedman Fantagraphics, 32 pages, $14.95 If you’re a devotee of old-school comics of the Hebraic persuasion, Milton Berle, Jack Benny and the Marx Brothers might come to mind when you think of comedy lengeds. For those whose tastes run to the lesser known or to the slightly more obscure, the…
I’ve always loved Emma Thompson. She’s hilarious and self-effacing and sexy and beautiful in an un-Botoxed way. She can handle Shakespeare (“Much Ado About Nothing”), film noir (“Dead Again”), Jane Austen (“Sense and Sensibility”) and Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”). She was incredible in the HBO Films production of Margaret Edson’s play “Wit.” And if…
Debbie Friedman, Craig Taubman and Cantor Jeff Klepper of Kol B’Seder join forces this weekend in a concert presented by the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education and sponsored by the Forward. Comedian Joel Chasnoff, who serves as master of ceremonies, joins the three legendary musicians. The performance is being held at Congregation Rodeph…
As it is said, in Genesis 28:16: “And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.’” I am a Jew. A matrilineal, patrilineal, Temple-going, nonpraying, kosher-keeping, nonfasting, Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Ladino-Yiddish-Spanish-English-speaking skeptical, superstitious, terrified, brazen, monotheistic, mezuza-kissing, idol-worshipping Jew. I alternate between humbly…
As Ami Eden pointed out yesterday, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that Democrats are backing off the 9-11 recommendations that call for reorganizing Congress. This includes the disregarding of a recommendation that term limits on the Intelligence Committee be eliminated. Here’s a statement from Speaker-elect Pelosi’s office about the decision: “Eliminating term limits is among the…
For those who have been following the ongoing fight over the Intel committee chairmanship, Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi is indeed picking Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, after dumping Alcee Hastings earlier this week.
The Democrats haven’t even taken control of Congress and they are already reneging on their commitment to implement the 9/11 commission’s recommendations (see this Washington Post story).
