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Ethiopian Rabbis Demand Equal Pay
Seventeen Ethiopian religious leaders in Israel wrote last week to the office of Prime Minister Sharon, demanding that they be paid the same wages as rabbis who are not of Ethiopian origin. Sharon’s office has been in charge of religious services since the Religious Affairs Ministry was disbanded. The request was based on a government…
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Chickpeas
llan E. Mallenbaum from Plainview, N.Y., inquires: “Have you ever delved into the etymology of the Yiddish word arbes, referring to the cooked chickpeas seasoned with ground pepper that my northern Polish grandmother served to guests (like me) many (many) decades ago? I can see possible cognates in Spanish garbanzo and Greek erebinthos. I can…
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Dancing Around a Delicate Issue
‘Joy shatters barriers,” says a well-known Jewish aphorism. It’s a phrase that many Orthodox synagogues will take literally Tuesday evening with the beginning of Simchat Torah, one of the Jewish calendar’s most joyous days. When the yearlong Torah-reading cycle comes to a close, all Orthodox congregations will dance with their Torahs. But some will do…
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School Days
Each fall, I write a column about Josie’s education. But you can trace my own education from autumn to autumn. In 2002, when Josie was almost 1, I wrote mockingly about neurotic, hypercompetitive parents who actually would engage in insider trading to get their kids into the 92nd Street Y’s preschool. In 2003, when Josie…
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Beware of Stem-cell Foes Putting Scientific Method Under Microscope
It is often said that science is racing far ahead of our ethics. But bending science to try and meet ethical concerns is not the way to catch up. That is exactly what happened recently when two articles appeared in the prestigious British scientific journal Nature, touting “alternative” approaches to finding sources of stem cells…
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Signed, Stuffed, Delivered: Food and the Divine Decree
Hoshanah Rabah, the seventh day of Sukkot (which falls this year on Monday, October 24), is regarded as the day on which the divine decree decided on Yom Kippur is sealed. For many, the day’s significance is translated into culinary terms. For example, it is customary in some quarters to eat stuffed foods such as…
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Ex-officials Push Engagement With Hamas, Hezbollah
Bucking American and Israeli policy, a group of former senior American and British officials steeped in Middle East affairs have been conducting a dialogue with Hamas and Hezbollah in an attempt to bring the two militant Islamic groups into the democratic fold. The former Western officials have held two meetings in Lebanon in recent months…
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‘Fiddler’ Director Tells All
‘For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a Jew,” writes film director-writer-producer Norman Jewison in his just-published autobiography, “This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me” (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press). “When I was 6, I started going to the Kenilworth synagogue, in the Beach area of Toronto, with my…
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Poverty and Crime Rates Reveal Israel’s Failure To Absorb Ethiopian Immigrants
TEL AVIV — Following a wave of violent incidents, political controversies and alarming sociological findings regarding the poverty-plagued immigrant community, Prime Minister Sharon has agreed to head up a campaign to boost public support for Ethiopian Israelis. The campaign, which is being organized by the Jewish Agency for Israel, is set to launch next month….
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Anti-war Activists Call on Reform
Jewish anti-war activists are launching a major campaign to get the country’s largest synagogue movement to come out against the Iraq War. The campaign was announced to followers Monday in an e-mail from Rabbi Arthur Waskow, head of the Philadelphia-based Shalom Center. Waskow, a leading Jewish anti-war activist, announced that his organization was attempting to…
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JCCs Fall by the Wayside in L.A.
LOS ANGELES — A ramshackle brick building in the bohemian Silver Lake neighborhood here still carries the name Jewish Community Center, but it is only because of some desperate local teamwork and a very non-Jewish hero. A year ago, the Silverlake JCC’s property was on the market and ready to go to the highest bidder….
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