“Of all the leaders I dealt with, I most admired Rabin,” keynote speaker Dennis Ross recalled at the October 30 American Friends of Rabin Medical Center dinner. Held at the Pierre, the event occurred just days before the 10th anniversary of the leader’s assassination. “He was the embodiment of Israel,” mused Ross, who played a…
When Ben Shalom Bernanke, President Bush’s nominee to be the new Federal Reserve chairman, was a teenager in the small town of Dillon, S.C., in the 1960s, he helped lead services and roll the Torah scrolls in the town’s synagogue. Judaism remains a part of Bernanke’s life, but the Princeton University economist does not wear…
On the 30th anniversary of the Yiddish poet Leyb Oblitsky’s death, the columns of the Forverts dedicated to Pearls of Yiddish Poetry featured the story of a deadly date, May 10. It was the day dubbed the auto-da-fé — which in Portuguese means “Act of Faith.” The specific act of faith to which the phrase…
NEW ORLEANS — Harry Lazarus, the owner of a construction company founded by his father-in-law nearly a half century ago, has lived in New Orleans his entire life. He has no plans to leave anytime soon. His older brother, Edward, an obstetrician, delivered babies during Hurricane Katrina without the aid of electricity or epidurals, then…
Let’s put it this way: Even if he were running for head of the tenants committee of an isolated lighthouse in which he was the only tenant, Shimon Peres would lose by 0.6%. And after a long sleepless night of uncertainty, at the end of which he would show up with his face crestfallen —…
Information pieced together by the Forward from documents and interviews provide a rare glimpse into the hunt for a dead terrorist suspect, featuring cooperation and tensions between intelligence services and investigators as well as a possible cover-up operation by Hezbollah. In late 1999, Argentina launched secret operation “Gaviota,” with the aim of recruiting informants within…
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s unusual personal involvement this week in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over a border crossing in Gaza has some Jewish organizations voicing concern about American pressure on Jerusalem. In what some observers are describing as an unprecedented intervention for the Bush administration, Rice served as a go-between in negotiations Monday between…
WASHINGTON — Last week’s suicide attacks on three Jordanian hotels has undercut Muslim support for Al Qaeda and the insurgents in Iraq, but also heightened concerns about their ability to strike Israel and other countries, experts said. “Unintentionally perhaps, the United States, through its actions in Iraq, has created a fertile zone where these militant…
LONDON — It has been a very rough spell for David Blunkett, a top ally of Prime Minister Tony Blair and one of the brightest lights in the Labour Party. Blunkett, who was born blind and poor in 1947, was viewed until recently as a leading contender to become prime minister after Blair steps down…
Bernard “Red” Sarachek, former Yeshiva University basketball coach, died November 14 after a long illness. He was 93. Sarachek coached the Y.U. team from 1942 to ’43 and from 1945 to ’69. He is a member of the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame and the New York City Hall of Fame. He worked…
NEW ORLEANS — Before Hurricane Katrina hit, the Shir Chadash Conservative Congregation had $750,000 in pledges from congregants and was planning to update its 1970s-era building in suburban New Orleans. Now, nearly three months after the storm, the city’s only Conservative congregation faces a fiscal crisis and is simply hoping to survive. The synagogue suffered…
