Dr. Jose Miller, president of Cuba’s tiny Jewish community, died February 27 at age 80. Eddie Levy, chairman of the South Florida organization Jewish Solidarity, told the Miami Herald: “If there is a Jewish community in Cuba, it’s because of his leadership. It was his job, his work, his life.” Miller was born in Sancti…
Born in Russia in the 1930s, Zhenya Greshes didn’t grow up “religious.” But she did grow up “Yiddish,” speaking the language at home, attending Yiddish schools, reading Yiddish newspapers. After fleeing with her family to Cuba, and then fleeing again to America in the 1960s, Greshes settled in Atlanta. While America became her new home,…
John Mearsheimer says that the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful that he and co-author Stephen Walt would never have been able to place their report in a American-based scientific publication. “I do not believe that we could have gotten it published in the United States,” Mearsheimer told the Forward. He said that the paper was…
On the 40th yahrzeit of poet Nokhem Yud (1887-1966), the Forverts devoted its column Pearls of Yiddish Poetry to this prolific and profound writer. His collective works filled 700 pages. One of his favorite subjects was Don Quixote, the “Man of La Mancha.” What follows is his poem on Quixote, transliterated into the Roman alphabet…
WASHINGTON — In the face of one of the harshest reports on the pro-Israel lobby to emerge from academia, Jewish organizations are holding fire in order to avoid generating publicity for their critics. Officials at Jewish organizations are furious over “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” a new paper by John Mearsheimer, a top…
We were seated, full from a sumptuous meal, around a dinner table: My wife and I, a retired professor of Russian literature and his wife, several other guests and our hosts. Two of the guests were having a political argument. “Koyl mir di genz,” one of them said. “What does that mean?” I asked. That…
Whatever else he might have accomplished in this week’s dramatic raid on a Jericho prison, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert certainly put his personal stamp on Israel’s political agenda. If any Israelis were still wondering about Olmert’s leadership skills and his mastery of things military, they’ll now have the images from Jericho to carry with…
BERLIN — In part of a nationwide crackdown on the growing neo-Nazi movement, Germany’s highest administrative court handed down a first-ever ruling this week classifying a neo-Nazi rock group as a criminal organization because its lyrics spread racial hatred. The decision came on the heels of a national controversy stirred up here last week, when…
The Hungarian government soon will begin paying family members of Holocaust victims $1,800 for each sibling or parent who was murdered, rekindling old debates about “blood money” and the limits of reparations. The Hungarians agreed to the payments during a meeting in Budapest last week with the president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims…
By some standards, Beth Israel synagogue fared well last summer when Hurricane Katrina swept through Biloxi, Miss. Several of the congregation’s 60 families lost their homes, and about a tenth are leaving town. The temple, a small building on Camellia Street with a curving brick facade, suffered severe roof and water damage. Still, the sanctuary…
An ultra-Orthodox organization will start endorsing chaplains for the United States military, ending the 88-year-long monopoly on endorsements held by the multi-denominational body that had vetted all previous candidates. The Aleph Institute, an organization linked to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement previously known for helping Jewish prisoners, was approved last month by the Department of Defense to…
