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Erecting Foundations For Those With Special Needs
Esther Greenspan has survived a motor disability that interfered with her ability to nurse, 10 broken bones in her first 10 years of life, asthma attacks, scoliosis that required surgical treatment and illnesses that her body has trouble shaking off because her immune system is weak. She’s now 19. In the winter of 2005, her…
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In Search of Religious Rationality, Dalai Lama Visits … the Mideast
JERUSALEM –– The Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and exiled leader of the Tibetan people, paid his fourth visit to Israel last week. The self-styled “simple Buddhist monk” sold out speaking engagements, sparked a small controversy within the Israeli government and, just as a Hamas-led parliament was about to be sworn in, met with…
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LETTER TO OPRAH
SELMA KATZ c/o Larry and Sheryl Katz 17-82.5 Parsons Boulevard Flushing, NY 11432 Oprah Winfrey Harpo Productions One South Wacker Drive Chicago, Illinois 60606 Facsimile 312.987.5637 Dear Opie, As I meditate on my screensaver, which is, of course, you, I want to thank you for being my only friend, if not best friend. Honestly, my…
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Activist Ejected
A Jewish Defense League activist filed a police complaint against Georgetown University after campus police ejected him February 18 from a Palestine Solidarity Movement conference. Campus security threw Bill Maniaci of Reno, Nev., and Matthew Finberg of Boulder, Colo., out of the event, which was aimed at promoting divestment from Israel. Maniaci said two campus…
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A Trio of Farewells
I first met Coretta Scott King — who died January 30 at 78 — in 1995 at a Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration hosted by the World Jewish Congress. The event, which took place at the Seagram Building, celebrated the proclamation by Jewish communities in 80 countries that Jews worldwide will remember King’s legacy. In…
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CAMPAIGN CONFIDENTIAL
Disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff may have played a key role in setting up a 2002 meeting between President Bush and an Asian leader known for his anti-Jewish speeches, according to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times. The Times reported last week that the Malaysian government paid Abramoff $1.2 million for work in…
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Bernie Weisberg, Labor Zionist
Bernie Weisberg, former national director of Young Judea and the Labor Zionist Alliance, died last Wednesday at the age of 82. Born in Maine, Weisberg attended Yeshiva University as an undergraduate and considered becoming a rabbi. However, when the school newspaper refused to publish an editorial he had written that supported the establishment of a…
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Ethiopian Immigrants to Israel Left Waiting in Limbo
More than a year after promising to bring 600 Ethiopians to Israel each month, the Israeli government has taken few concrete steps toward fulfilling the pledge, leaving thousands of immigrants in unhappy limbo and in squalid conditions. At issue is the fate of the Falash Mura, Ethiopians who are said to have Jewish ancestors who…
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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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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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