Rabbi Said To Drop Fight An Orthodox rabbi has dropped his legal fight to identify anonymous bloggers who wrote on their Web sites about his alleged sexual harassment of female congregants. Rabbi Mordecai Tendler, who was accused by at least nine women from his former congregation in New Hempstead, N.Y., of sexually propositioning them when…
On the eve of fresh congressional hearings about the return of artworks looted during the Nazi era, a new study indicates that American museums have lagged behind on commitments they made in the late 1990s to research and publicize potentially looted artworks. The study, conducted by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against…
BAD AROLSEN, Germany – Behind the stone walls of a rectangular building in this picturesque town, which is famous for its baroque architecture, sits the world’s biggest archive of documents, photographs, maps and correspondence pertaining to the Nazi Holocaust. The entrance is emblazoned with a modest red cross. Inside these former SS barracks and a…
BANGKOK – Tsion and Michal Sa’adia were vacationing in this Southeast Asian city last week when an official from the Israeli Embassy in Thailand tracked them down in room 1243 of the Bangkok Palace Hotel. Before Israeli envoy Idit Shamir, first secretary deputy chief of mission, could deliver the message, Michal was fearing the worst…
Sherry Leffert from Cambridge, Mass., writes: “I have been a Tai Chi student, and my husband and I were wondering how the martial arts terms would be translated into Yiddish. We thought of ‘zetz,’ ‘frosk,’ ‘patsh’ ‘klop,’ ‘shtrokh,’ ‘shlug,’ and ‘hock.’ Can you think of any others? Are there distinctions between these terms? Please enlighten…
“Jews can survive persecution. Jews can’t survive indifference,” said 90-year old Bernard Lewis, an honoree at the June 14 Tel Aviv University Jubilee dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria. Lewis, who is Cleveland E. Dodge professor of Near Eastern studies, emeritus, at Princeton University and visiting fellow of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies, is…
This summer, we’ll be visiting Bubbe in Newport, R.I., and my in-laws in Milwaukee. In Newport we will pick raspberries, scream in terror at lobsters, gaze in wonder at the surreal topiaries at Green Animals, ride the carousel at First Beach. In Milwaukee we will once again eyeball livestock at the Wisconsin State Fair, run…
Ursula Merkin, a philanthropist who played a prominent role in various Jewish institutions, passed away on July 23. Her daughter, novelist and cultural critic Daphne Merkin, delivered the remarks below at a memorial service this week. My mother was one of the most vivid people I’ve ever met. She was full of contrary impulses, all…
A surprisingly close race involving one of the pro-Israel community’s least favorite lawmakers, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, is poised to become a Middle East proxy fight. McKinney, a left-wing Georgia Democrat with a long history of criticizing Israel, finds herself in an unexpected run-off election after failing to win a majority in her July 18 primary….
HACKENSACK, N.J. — The two teenagers were enjoying the long days of summer last Saturday, playing a casual, early-evening game of soccer with friends. But when a thunderstorm touched down July 22 on the elementary school field in Montvale, N.J., where Steven Fagan, 18, and Lee Weisbrod, 19, were playing soccer, a bolt of lightning…
Last week, in the small German city of Neumarkt, the curtain went up on an improbable musical about the life and death of a young Jewish woman who was deported and killed by the Nazis. The production was unlikely in part because of the Broadway format chosen for a Holocaust tale. But more than this,…
