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Newsdesk February 24, 2006
Religion Ruling Cheered Jewish organizations welcomed a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a small religious sect’s right to use an illegal hallucinogenic. The União do Vegetal argued that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 exempted the group from bans on the ritual use of hoasca, a tea containing diemethyltryptamine. The court decision Tuesday,…
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Onetime Lubavitcher Creates New Life Out of Whole Cloth
On a recent Sunday evening at the height of New York’s Fashion Week, the Cafe Deville was bustling. Backstage, beneath the downtown bistro’s dining room, designer Levi Okunov’s latest line of coats hung from a set of racks. A hairdresser and a makeup artist were busy doing up the models according to this year’s theme:…
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Philanthropic Foundation Puts Focus on Education
When San Francisco real estate developer Jim Joseph died in 2003, he received no obituary in any major newspaper. Born in Austria and brought to California as a child, he had built up a fortune and become a major giver to Jewish causes — his charitable trust gave away between $500,000 and $1.5 million per…
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You Say ‘Phylacteries,’ I Say ‘Tefillin’
Fred Lerner of White River Junction, Vt., a little town that has now accounted for two straight columns (see last week’s “Now Shmear This”), has a complaint. He writes: “In the January 20 issue of the Forward, Raphael Mostel, in an article about the composer Osvaldo Golijov, wrote that, ‘One memory he has of his…
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Remembering Russia in the Golden State
At the start of the wave of Soviet Jewish migration to the United States that began in 1979, the Cold War was still very much in effect — and being Russian in America was not all that easy. “I wanted to assimilate as quickly as possible and not associate with other Russians,” said Igor Sinyak,…
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Cooling Tensions
The philosophy behind a new nonprofit organization, Breaking the Ice, suggests that reconciliation under extreme conditions is not only possible — it’s preferable. Or at least that was the thinking behind an Antarctic trek pairing four Israelis and four Palestinians. Project founder Nathaniel Heskel, a Berlin-based Israeli banker, was convinced that “something crazy must happen,…
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Singer Neshama Carlebach Nixes Gig at Messianic Congregation
Devoted groupies of singer Neshama Carlebach may want to revise their schedules: She is abandoning her plans to perform at a messianic Jewish congregation in New York. The Orthodox performer — daughter of the late Hasidic-hippie “Singing Rabbi” Shlomo Carlebach — had been scheduled to perform at a Purim concert next month at Congregation Beth…
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DER YIDDISH-VINKL February 17, 2006
Marc Chagall is an artist of world renown. His paintings of Jewish life, especially those depicting life in the shtetl, are masterpieces that grace the walls of institutions in many lands. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his death, the Forverts devoted its page of Pearls of Yiddish Poetry to Chagall’s work. What…
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Even Maimonides Would Agree: Hazardous Rite Should Be Retired
One of the first things I was taught when I began my surgical training about 50 years ago was that I must never spit into an open wound. To my knowledge, that is still a good rule. As ridiculous as such a statement sounds, it is not much more ridiculous than the idea of deliberately…
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Welcoming a Latter-day de Tocqueville
In his signature black suit — white chemise empesée open to the sternum — and with D’Artagnan-esque flair, French celebrity intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy held court at a January 27 reception in his honor, hosted by France’s ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte and co-hosted at New York’s French consulate by France’s consul general, François…
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Behind Tough Talk, Israel Torn on Hamas
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, visiting Cairo this week, refused to confirm or deny a controversial New York Times report that the United States and Israel were discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government and force new elections. “Stories break every morning,” Mofaz told reporters after his February 14 meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. “I…
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