When Google’s founders — two computer scientists with scant business experience between them — brought in a computer industry veteran to serve as CEO just three years after the upstart Internet search engine was launched, the move was seen as the result of pressure from outside venture capitalists. The original visionaries, while still involved in…
I remember hobbies. I used to go to the pottery studio and the gym. I’d find furniture on the street, then strip and repaint it in crazy colors and patterns. I tutored newly arrived immigrants in English. I baked. I read things. Things with more pages than Entertainment Weekly. These days, not so much. For…
From under his thick beard, Jewish reggae rock star Matisyahu uttered a single word: “Crap.” His New York Rangers were being beaten across the ice by Brandon from Oregon. Matisyahu, whose real name is Matthew Miller, played fans last Tuesday in quick games of NHL 2K6, a popular Xbox 360 video game. The Lubavitch Hasid,…
The modern imagination feels at home with the moral question raised by the Job story: Why do bad things happen to good people? It is a question that does not arise in Deuteronomy, which foresees punishments of spectacular awfulness in retribution upon a nation disobedient to God’s law. What type of disobedience will these calamities…
In response to my August 18 column, Marcel J. Silberman writes in an e-mail from Oklahoma City: “I was taken back when in your last column — about Katyusha — you mentioned that you had gone as a boy to a Hebrew-speaking camp. I too attended such a camp. It was Camp Massad in the…
Matthew E. Berger filed a report this week on the Democratic primary between Rep. Ben Cardin, a prominent Jewish lawmaker from the Baltimore area, and Kweisi Mfume, a former congressman and former head of the NAACP. A few notes from the campaign trail… Viewed as the frontrunner, Cardin was the main target at the recent…
To [stump][1] for Democrat Claire McCaskill this Saturday. McCaskill, Missouri’s state auditor, is challenging Republican Jim Talent for his Senate seat, and current poll shows them in a dead heat, with 47% backing McCaskill versus 46% for Talent. Two percent supported Libertarian Frank Gilmour, while the remaining 5 percent were undecided. McCaskill drew Republican ire…
Lieberman’s campaign releases poll that puts its guy way ahead. Team Lieberman pulls down link to a doctored photo of Osama bin Laden with a Ned Lamont bumper sticker. Lamont and Lieberman at it over Iraq. New Lamont ad asks: “Why do we listen when George Bush and Joe Lieberman tell us they know how…
At the Lion of Judah Conference. Here’s the program.
The House Judiciary Committee has approved a bill – dubbed the “Public Expression of Religion Act”– that would make it more difficult for Americans to challenge church-state violations in court. H.R. 2679 would deny legal fees and out-of-pocket expenses to plaintiffs who win lawsuits under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The move is being publicized…
Joe Lieberman’s campaign was quick to spread word that the Anti-Defamation League had asked MoveOn.org to condemn the handful of antisemitic posts about the senator that users had put up on the pro-Ned Lamont Web site. We’re still waiting to hear from the Lieberman camp aboout the ADL now praising MoveOn for its response to…
