BRUSSELS — A fight is erupting over an upstart Chabad-dominated rabbinical organization that critics say is waging an intense political struggle to become the main Jewish representative to the European Union. Critics say that the Center of European Rabbis, a fairly new organization that is associated with the Chabad Lubavitch movement, is attempting to supplant…
TORONTO — Barry Sherman is often cheered as one of Canadian Jewry’s most successful businessmen and most generous donors to charitable causes. But this month, his largess has put him at the center of a campaign finance scandal. The controversy involves about $100,000 of political contributions from Sherman — the 64-year-old founder and chair of…
Why are we so often at cross-purposes, and at times seemingly embarrassed, about our attitude toward economic growth? Even in those parts of the world where the need to improve nutrition, literacy and life expectancy is urgent, there is often a grudging aspect to the recognition that achieving superior growth is a top priority. And…
Jewish women in the New York needle trades were among the first women to organize into unions. A song based on a poem by David Edelshtat (1866-1892) titled “Arbeter Froyen” appeared in the anarchist Di Fraye Arbeter Shtime (Free Voice of Labor) in May 1891. The text, along with music, appears in “Pearls of Yiddish…
A prestigious Israeli institute was scrambling this week to find female participants for a high-powered parley on the future of the Jewish people after being heavily criticized for failing to include any women. In recent days the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a Jerusalem-based policy consortium that boasts former American diplomat Dennis Ross as its…
The Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust hosted its May 15 annual Heritage Dinner
Middle East politics follows just one law — the Law of Unintended Consequences. A corollary states that the law’s power is particularly great when someone seeks to evade it — for instance, when a leader acts unilaterally, imposing his own will, to keep his opponent from disturbing his plans. If these axioms needed more proof,…
On its face, the nuclear deal signed by the Bush administration and India, now heading for approval before Congress, sets a good precedent for Israel. In effect, Washington is rewarding a country that developed nuclear weapons in circumvention of the landmark nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, sanctioning its arsenal after the fact because of its responsible behavior….
For Detroit’s executives and union leaders, plummeting auto sales and stock prices are foreboding harbingers of a faltering industry. But some Christian conservative activists are hailing the bad numbers as a victory. Three months after launching a boycott against Ford Motor Co. to protest the firm’s ties to gay and lesbian advocacy groups and publications,…
WASHINGTON — The local Jewish community in New York is at odds with national Jewish organizations over the Bush administration’s decision to cut counter-terrorism funding to the city. Leaders of the local community argue that Jews have a special stake in maintaining New York’s high level of funding from the Department of Homeland Security’s Urban…
It was a moment of mutual discovery. There I was, an American rabbi in a business suit and yarmulke, standing in a tropical garden in the African nation of Senegal, shaking hands with a dozen-odd colorfully dressed imams and sheiks and wondering what they would say next. I was in Dakar, the capital, for meetings…
