UNITED NATIONS — The Bush administration’s decision not to seek a seat on a newly created United Nations human rights council has Jewish groups worried that America is passing up an opportunity to bolster the defense of human rights and prevent unfair treatment of Israel. Several major Jewish organizations prudently have expressed understanding for the…
Two Orthodox politicians in Brooklyn are embroiled in a growing controversy over their claims that the police were responsible for a riot last week in the Hasidic enclave of Boro Park and that a top officer had used an anti-Jewish epithet. Council member Simcha Felder and State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, both Democrats, voiced their allegations…
JERUSALEM — Israel shelled Gaza this week as Ehud Olmert intesified Israeli political, military and economic pressure on the new Hamas-led Palestinian government, a strategy he hopes will force the terrorist group to change its ways or be overthrown. The aim is to isolate Hamas internationally, cut off direct funding to the Palestinian Authority and…
TORONTO — A York University professor has lodged a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, alleging that the school discriminates against non-Jewish students because it cancels classes for three days annually during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. David Noble, a Jewish professor at York, filed the human rights complaint with the quasi-judicial commission after…
In 2003, President Bush told Americans that we had to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing nuclear weapons and stockpiling chemical and biological ones. We now know that those threats did not exist. Three deadly years later, Bush is again misleading the American public about the threat emanating from Iraq. This time, however,…
When clearing their homes of unleavened products before Passover, most people remember to rid the cupboards of rye bread and to empty the leftover challah from the freezers. Something that is forgotten by many, however, is the checking of makeup for traces of chametz. But it shouldn’t be. Though it may come as a surprise…
Key players in the Bush administration think a military confrontation with Iran is an unavoidable, leading to stepped up military planning for such a prospect, according to several experts and recently departed senior government officials. Some of these observers stressed that military strikes against Iran are not imminent and speculated that the escalated war chatter…
For Mexico City’s David and Hershl Fiiller, making matzo is a family tradition with trans-Atlantic roots. The brothers, children of Polish immigrants who arrived in the 1920s, grew up helping their parents in the bakery adjoining their small downtown abode. Today the site is home to the Fiiller bread factory, a 4,000-square-foot facility with 25…
Jonathan Safran Foer, author of the bestselling novel “Everything is Illuminated,” this week released a video in which he argues that the slaughtering practices employed by modern factory farms are out of step with the spirit of the kosher laws. The film ultimately calls upon viewers to consider vegetarianism. The video, which features interviews with…
On Passover, Jews are told to read the Haggadah (literally “the telling”) as if one personally had been a slave in Egypt and then redeemed. By individualizing the text, each person confronts the narrative in new ways, in terms of his or her own life and times. The result has been a multiplicity of Haggadot…
KFAR CHABAD, Israel — Bucking the advice of their rabbis, about 30% of voters in Israel’s main Chabad-Lubavitch stronghold cast their ballots for a candidate who advocated the mass expulsion of Arabs, branded Israeli leaders traitors and called for the execution of some liberals. Baruch Marzel, running under the banner of the National Jewish Front,…
