Every day at 12:30 p.m. in the Beth El Early Childhood Center in Voorhees, N.J., a total of eight children, all 3 and 4 years old , file into a room. They are all talking simultaneously, as children do, about the usual pressing kiddie topics: dinosaurs, lunch, the playground. What is unusual about their conversation?…
Labor Wants Agency Post As one of its demands in coalition negotiations, the Labor Party is seeking to regain from Likud the chairmanship of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Two Labor figures, Collete Avital and Haggai Merom, are fighting to take over the quasi-governmental agency, which receives more than $200 million from American Jewish charitable…
The national president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, has promised the widow of a former executive director that the organization will resume making payments for her health care — two years after those payments were abruptly cut off. Klein made the offer after the Forward inquired about the 89-year old widow’s situation….
In the hospital where I spent my critical care rotation, the patients in the intensive care unit (“the unit,” for short) weren’t as sick as those in some other hospitals. They were all more or less aware and oriented to their surroundings. You could have a conversation with them. On one not particularly busy day,…
The razing last month of the First Roumanian-American Congregation, Shaarey Shamoyim, one of the oldest synagogues on New York City’s Lower East Side, hit me hard. Really hard. Following the collapse of the building’s 150-year-old roof, the city’s Department of Buildings felt it had no choice but to tear down the entire structure, lest lives…
The inimitable Stanley Siegelman has returned to Der Vinkl to report on a new trend among Russian Jews immigrating to the United States: They are undergoing ritual circumcision in significant numbers. The goal is to affirm in a demonstrable way their allegiance to Orthodox Judaism. Di Ruskis Kumen Fun Rusland, take, kumen zey. Fil yidn…
A group of American Holocaust survivors is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to alter the terms of a mammoth Holocaust restitution agreement that is sending tens of millions of dollars to survivors in the former Soviet Union rather than to survivors in America. The petition, filed last week by the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA, a…
Allegations that President Bush authorized the leaking of controversial data on Iraqi weapons could bolster the defense of the two former staffers of the pro-Israel lobby charged with receiving and disclosing classified national defense information, legal experts said. In court filings last week, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asserted that I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick…
Arnold Eisen traveled to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America 35 years ago, ostensibly to interview the legendary professor Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel for the student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania. But for the young religious studies major the encounter with the spiritual icon and civil rights activist was more than just an assignment….
In a stark reversal of political fortune, Democratic legislators attempting to seize the pro-religion spotlight in Georgia last month have found themselves unexpectedly converted into backers of a Republican bill to teach the Bible in public schools. The bill, which was overwhelmingly approved by the legislature and is expected to be signed by Republican Governor…
A group of former presidents and executive directors from the Zionist Organization of America is putting pressure on the organization’s current leadership over severance payments that have been denied to the ZOA’s longtime security guard. Seven former ZOA presidents and executive directors have come together in the weeks since the Forward wrote an article describing…
