After a massive campaign launched by American Jewish organizations and at least three foreign governments, the Russian government appears to be relenting in its effort to block a leading rabbi from returning to the country. Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, who has been the chief rabbi of Moscow’s main synagogue for 15 years, was turned back at…
TEL AVIV — The recent conviction of Prime Minister Sharon’s most trusted political confidant — his son Omri — is dragging the long-festering issue of government corruption into the Israeli election campaign. Just minutes before the prime minister officially registered his new Kadima party last week, he directed aides to strike his son’s name and…
TEL AVIV – During his four-and-half years in office, Prime Minister Sharon has often been accused of avoiding the press. In interviews, Sharon has characteristically been curt and evasive. But in his first press conference after disengaging himself from the Likud, Sharon had all the time in the world. He answered every question, brimming with…
BANGKOK — An Israeli backpacker originally diagnosed as suffering from human bird flu regained consciousness Wednesday for the first time in a week. Ortal Swissa, an Israeli traveler in her 20s, had been hospitalized and listed in critical condition after coming down with a lung infection. When she was first admitted, doctors said Swissa was…
HOUSTON — For more than a quarter-century, the Reform movement has made it a priority to reach out to interfaith couples. Now, its leader, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, said it’s time to start doing more to encourage non-Jewish spouses to convert to Judaism. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, issued the call to action…
Russia: Rabbi Can’t Return Moscow’s chief rabbi, Pinchas Goldschmidt, will never be allowed to return to Russia, the country’s Internal Affairs Ministry said. The news came in a letter from the ministry publicized Tuesday. The letter cited an article in Russian legislation that prevents foreigners who are deemed threats to Russian national security from entering…
Harold B. Lehrman writes: “Unable to find ‘abecedary’ in Webster’s New International Dictionary, The Century Dictionary, or the OED [The Oxford English Dictionary], I call upon a philologist to enlighten me. John Noble Wilford used this word in his article ‘A Is for Ancient’ in The New York Times of November 9.” When someone can’t…
On Father’s Day, most dads open gifts of ties, or golf clubs, or clay items shaped by children’s hands, eat medium-rare hamburgers at family barbecues and talk a lot of huff about how they’d do anything for their kids. On Father’s Day 1995, chainsaw artist Skip Roth actually proved this to his children by shooting…
The story is told of an Orthodox man who stepped onto a bus in Jerusalem, eight children in tow. The bus driver, frustrated by all the chaos, barked out at him, “Why didn’t you just leave half your kids at home?” The man paused and then answered, “I did.” It may seem that the Orthodox…
The number of American casualties in Iraq is now well more than 2,000, and there is no end in sight. Some two-thirds of Americans, according to the polls, believe the war to have been a mistake. And congressional elections are just around the corner. What had to come, has come. The question is no longer…
Rabbi David Polsky mans the Orthodox Union’s Kosher Hotline from a small, plain white office at the O.U.’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan. In the corner he has a large bookshelf containing volumes of the Shulchan Aruch and the Talmud’s Tractate Chulin, and a number of other books on kashrut, or Jewish dietary law. His desk…
