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Anger Over Schorsch Speech Fuels Questions About Seminary’s Role
As anger reverberates through Conservative Judaism in the wake of a downbeat farewell address last month by the retiring chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, concerns are mounting over a perceived leadership vacuum within the movement and the seminary’s ability to maintain its leadership position. The chancellor, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, addressing his final graduation ceremony…
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Non-Orthodox Press for Access to Israeli Mikvehs
JERUSALEM — The Israeli movements for Conservative and Reform Judaism are protesting disparaging statements made last week by the government minister in charge of religious affairs, Yitzhak Cohen of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, who dismissed non-Orthodox conversions as “virtual” and undeserving of ritual immersion in publicly funded ritual baths. Cohen told a reporter May 30…
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Religious Groups Push Kentucky Schools To Use ‘Before Christ’
In the wake of national debates about the teaching of evolution and sex education in the public schools, Christian conservatives in Kentucky are now mobilizing over the issue of calendar abbreviations. Activists, along with the governor and other state politicians, have accused the State Board of Education of attempting to drive Christianity from the classroom…
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Abbas Pressuring Hamas As Gaza Violence Erupts
JERUSALEM — Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic militant organization, found itself increasingly backed into a corner last week as support mounted on multiple fronts for Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, in his effort to win endorsement of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Abbas, who had been on the defensive after Hamas won Palestinian legislative…
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Death in Blast
One construction worker was killed and two others were critically injured in an explosion Tuesday night while they were attempting to install a mikveh in the basement of a Brooklyn home. The blast was strong enough to blow out a wall in the home, according to fire department officials. City officials reportedly said that the…
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Human Trafficking Report Slaps Israel
WASHINGTON — The State Department has put Israel on a special “watch list,” citing its “failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to address trafficking” in human beings. In its annual Report on Human Trafficking, published Monday, the State Department contended that “the Government of Israel does not fully comply with the minimum standards for…
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Salute to Israel Parade Draws 100,000
Under an overcast sky, nearly 100,000 New Yorkers turned out June 4 for the city’s 42nd annual Salute to Israel Parade. Along with the mayor, New York’s two senators, talk-show host Ruth Westheimer, and contingents from the city’s Jewish police and firefighter societies, marchers included almost 100 members of the Halachic Organ Donor Society; 12…
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Rag Time
An e-mailer signing off as Shlomo writes: “A recent NPR broadcast (May 27, 2006) on the use of dog hair in cloth noted in passing that the word shmatte derives from a Catalan source. Jews in pre-1492 Spain were prominent in the dog cloth trade, it seems. Is Catalan actually the source of this Yiddish…
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Remembering the Top of the Pops
‘Tonight we celebrate the keyboard and the life of a man who didn’t just play it — he inhabited it,” said composer, conductor, pianist and emcee-tummler Marvin Hamlisch at the 23rd New York Pops Birthday Gala, 88 Keys for Skitch, held May 8 at Carnegie Hall. (Skitch Henderson, founder and musical director of the Pops,…
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Stepping Into American Life
Been to a Jewish wedding of late? If you, like me, have had the good fortune to attend one recently, surely you’ll agree that one of its most striking features is the range of sounds emanating from the bandstand, from the upbeat strains of klezmer and Israeli music to the rhythms of Motown, the twang…
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DER YIDDISH-VINKL June 9, 2006
Eleanor Gordon Mlotek and Joseph Mlotek were compilers of a series of books published by the Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring. One of these compendia is titled “Pearls of Yiddish Poetry,” the same title of a regular column in the Forverts. The following poem by Abraham Reisen is taken from the Mlotek compendium. The English version is…
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