Like many top-tier philanthropists, Moshe Kantor was tired of listening to staffers at charitable organizations tell him how to spend his considerable wealth. So the Russian business tycoon came up with a solution: the creation of a “House of Jewish Lords” that would serve as a place for well-to-do donors to throw their philanthropic money…
As world leaders struggle to halt the mass killing in Darfur, former general and 2004 presidential candidate Wesley Clark is calling for NATO to intervene in the conflict and for the United States to commit a small detachment of ground troops. Clark served as the supreme allied commander of the NATO forces that drove Serbian…
WASHINGTON — Despite receiving warm embraces in Congress and in the White House this week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert returned home with mounting opposition and a lack of clear American support for his plan to have Israel determine its borders unilaterally. President Bush effusively praised Olmert during a White House meeting Tuesday, and Olmert was…
Jerzy Ficowski, a peerless advocate for the arts and letters of a decimated Polish Jewry, died in Warsaw on May 9, at the age of 82. Following World War II, during which he served in the Home Army and participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Ficowski published nearly 20 volumes of poetry, including the acclaimed…
TEL AVIV — A judicial commission investigating police ties to a reputed crime family sent a letter of warning May 23 to the office of Israel’s national police commissioner, Moshe Karadi, one of the officers at the center of the inquiry. Additional letters were sent to other police commanders and to several prosecutors. Letters of…
The Israeli political shakeup caused by the emergence of the centrist Kadima party is complicating negotiations over control of the three nonprofit agencies primarily responsible under Israeli law for the Jewish state’s relations with Diaspora Jewish communities, according to a report on Ynet, the Web site of the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot. The three…
As calls for divestment from Israel continue to ripple through mainline Protestant denominations, several of the world’s most prominent Catholic leaders are making high-profile overtures to the Jewish community. During a trip to Poland that started this week, the German-born Pope Benedict XVI is set to visit the Auschwitz death camp on May 28. Next…
JERUSALEM — Israel’s government-sponsored rabbinic courts have been ordered by the Chief Rabbinate to stop recognizing conversions and divorces performed by most Orthodox rabbis in the Diaspora, escalating the longstanding “Who Is a Jew” conflict to a new and previously unforeseen level. The new rule means that persons who underwent an Orthodox conversion abroad will…
Hamas Floats Cease-fire Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh told Ha’aretz Monday that the Hamas-led government is prepared to agree to an extended cease-fire if Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 borders. “If Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, peace will prevail and we will implement a [cease-fire] for many years,” Haniyeh said during an interview in…
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s maiden voyage to the White House seems to have gone as well as could be expected. After aides on both sides tried to plunge expectations lower than the Dead Sea before the summit, President Bush termed Olmert’s unilateral option to evacuate the majority of West Bank settlements a “bold” concept that…
In the wake of recent recommendations by a federal civil rights commission that university administrators should denounce antisemitic hate speech on campuses, the chancellor of a California state campus is facing harsh criticism for failing to condemn a week of “anti-Zionist” activities at the University of California, Irvine. Last week’s “Holocaust in the Holy Land”…
