In his signature black suit — white chemise empesée open to the sternum — and with D’Artagnan-esque flair, French celebrity intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy held court at a January 27 reception in his honor, hosted by France’s ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte and co-hosted at New York’s French consulate by France’s consul general, François…
WASHINGTON — Democrats are seeking to make embryonic stem-cell research a key issue in the 2006 midterm elections, in a move that is underscoring the party’s closeness with the Jewish community on so-called values questions. This week, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released a strategy memo arguing that “stem-cell research could define ’06 races.” The…
Two pillars of support for President Bush’s Iraq policy — neoconservative foreign policy hawks and evangelical Christians — have begun lining up with liberals and environmentalists in challenging the White House’s energy policy. The issue gained national attention in recent weeks, after President Bush declared in the State of the Union address that the United…
With international tensions at a fever pitch over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the violent reaction in Tehran to the European cartoon images of the Prophet Muhammad, concerns are rising about the fate of the Iranian Jewish community after its departing head took an unusual public swipe at the president of the Islamic Republic. Haroun Yeshaya,…
When the Church of England’s main legislative body voted last week to divest from companies whose products are used by Israel in the “occupied territories,” Jewish groups were quick to offer condemnation. Missing, however, was the sense of alarm that greeted the June 2004 decision by the Presbyterian Church (USA) to start the divestment process…
WASHINGTON — Palestinian American activists are vowing to lobby Hamas against turning the West Bank and Gaza into an Islamic theocracy. Anxious about the victory of the Islamic fundamentalist group in last month’s Palestinian parliamentary elections, Palestinian American leaders say that they will push for laws favoring American-style church-state separation, pluralism, equality and inclusiveness. “We…
An Australian cartoonist said that two of his old works dealing with the Holocaust were entered into an Iranian newspaper contest without his permission. Michael Leunig, whose Holocaust cartoons were rejected for publication in Australia in 2002, said Tuesday that he had discovered they were submitted to Iran’s Hamshahri newspaper. “This is a fraud and…
In the same week that China handed Israel a major diplomatic victory by agreeing to allow the isssue of Iran’s nuclear weapons program to be reported to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions, China’s leading scholar of Judaic studies urged Jews and Jewish organizations to seek a stronger relationship with China. Xu Xin,…
Omri Sharon Sentenced The son of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was sentenced to nine months in prison for campaign-funding violations in his father’s 1999 race for Likud Party leadership. Last Tuesday, Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court sentenced Omri Sharon to another nine months of suspended imprisonment and fined him some $65,000. Because of the condition…
WASHINGTON — Two months after the head of the Anti-Defamation League called for a united Jewish front against evangelical attempts to “Christianize” America, the ADL found itself pitted against a raft of other communal organizations in a controversy over guidelines for religious speech in the U.S. Air Force. The Air Force released revised interim guidelines…
When San Francisco real estate developer Jim Joseph died in 2003, he received no obituary in any major newspaper. Born in Austria and brought to California as a child, he had built up a fortune and become a major giver to Jewish causes — his charitable trust gave away between $500,000 and $1.5 million per…
אין פֿאַרגלײַך מיט די פֿיזישע פּאַוויליאָנען געשאַפֿן פֿון אָפֿיציעלע לענדער איז דער ייִדישלאַנד־פּאַוויליאָן געבויט אויף אידעעס
