We don’t tend to think of holidays as occasions into which we grow, but that is, in part, what they are. Thirty years ago, as a child growing up in the shah’s Iran, Purim was just another holiday to me. Later, on my family’s departure from Tehran — when I was just beginning to understand…
Joan Braman continues to enrich the columns of Der Yiddish Vinkl with her Yiddish translations of English classics. This time her subject is… Dover Beach By Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the…
WASHINGTON — Alarmed over the victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections in January, a group of the nation’s largest Jewish organizations put aside their frequent disagreements this week and came together in a strong, unanimous call for the international community to isolate the Palestinian Authority once Hamas takes over. Even as they closed ranks around…
As President Bush faces a bipartisan furor from the deal to hand over control of operations at six American ports to a Dubai firm, Democrats are using the controversy to underscore the ties of the administration and its allies to Arab nations. In particular, Democrats are pointing to links between administration cronies and Dubai World…
Following the release of a stinging government report on financial mismanagement at the World Jewish Congress, the organization struck back with a $6 million defamation lawsuit against the whistleblower behind the investigation. Now the hardball maneuver is causing a new set of headaches for the group, with its Australian affiliate threatening to quit the organization….
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s surprise victory in the Iranian presidential elections last year sent foreign-policy experts in Washington scrambling to decipher the little-known former Tehran mayor suddenly in charge of a country determined to master nuclear technology. The task has become all the more urgent and complex in recent months since Ahmadinejad has intensified his confrontational rhetoric,…
JERUSALEM — Israel’s two top security officials decided this week to appear personally before a special Knesset committee rather than permit officers to testify in an investigation of the violent clashes at the illegal West Bank outpost of Amona. The two officials, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra, said they were…
The eruption of violent Islamic protests over the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad has triggered a sharp debate between Jewish organizations over whether they should be speaking out about the crisis. The American Jewish Committee sent a delegation of its leaders to Denmark, which has come under harsh condemnation in the Muslim world for not…
Abortion Antagonism: The National Jewish Democratic Council’s plan to host a reception for Pennsylvania’s Democratic senatorial candidate next week at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual policy conference is drawing criticism from a Jewish Republican. The executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matt Brooks, says the Jewish Democrats are violating their principles by…
Uzbek Death Protested Jewish officials in the former Soviet Union appealed to Uzbek authorities to investigate the death of the Central Asian country’s Jewish leader. Rabbi Avraham Yagudayev, 33, died Saturday of injuries he received two days earlier in what the authorities have described as a road accident. Yagudayev was found unconscious and severely injured…
Every so often a play comes along that not only speaks directly to the concerns of its generation — to its specific anxieties and aspirations — but also renders those concerns with such crystalline clarity that the play emblematizes its moment in time. For my generation, that play was “Angels in America.” For my parents’…
אין פֿאַרגלײַך מיט די פֿיזישע פּאַוויליאָנען געשאַפֿן פֿון אָפֿיציעלע לענדער איז דער ייִדישלאַנד־פּאַוויליאָן געבויט אויף אידעען
