WASHINGTON — After months of refusing to oppose the dismantling of Jewish settlements in Gaza, the largest Orthodox organization in America is stepping up its criticism of the Israeli government. The Orthodox Union, representing 1,000 congregations in North America, sent an August 31 letter to the Israeli Supreme Court, urging it to forbid Prime Minister…
Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri said his country has had secret contacts with Israel for at least the past decade, the Pakistan News Wire reported Tuesday. According to the report, Kasuri made the remarks following a meeting of the Pakistani Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in Islamabad on Monday. The report quoted Kasuri as saying…
There’s always been a special kind of pride among the Jews of New Orleans. One of America’s oldest Jewish communities, they are a bundle of paradoxes with a genius for survival. Fifteen thousand strong at last count, they thrived for 300 years in a city whose staple foods are shrimp and crab, part of a…
TEL AVIV — Shortly after 3 a.m., on the evening of August 19, a resident of Rehovot called the local fire department station to report a fire in a nearby field. Then a neighbor reported a strong smell of gas coming from below his apartment. The firemen who rushed to the scene, about 15 miles…
I am 32 years old, and it’s time to decide what I want to be when I grow up. I do have things narrowed down somewhat: I want to be a doctor. But what kind? I don’t have the luxury of thinking it over much longer. The time has come to apply to residency programs…
Just days before the start of classes this week, the trustees of a Conservative Jewish day school in suburban Detroit pulled the plug on its teachers’ union. The controversial move followed an August 16 decision by the State of Michigan Court of Appeals, which said that teachers in religious schools throughout the state do not…
For millions of contemporary American Jewish children, September is back-to-school time. Like their parents and grandparents before them, they approach the first day of class with a mix of anticipation and trepidation: Butterflies in the stomach, my mother called it. Unlike their parents and grandparents, who had little choice in the matter, American Jewish school…
The country’s largest Orthodox organization posted an essay on its Web site last week that sharply criticized working mothers. “Let’s shatter the myth [of] a mother who works outside of the home,” Sara Malka Poupko Reichman wrote in an essay titled “Diary of a Professional Mother,” which was posted on the homepage of the Orthodox…
The Museum of Science and Industry, located in Tampa, Fla., recently opened what it is describing as an “educational” exhibition devoted to the body. Among the “pieces” on display are skinless corpses sliced in two, tarred human lungs, dehydrated brains, a gallery of dead fetuses, and a variety of sliced and diced body parts. As…
A surprise endorsement has injected a sudden dose of suspense into a feisty campaign that could spell the end of one of New York City’s most storied political careers. The race pits challenger Leslie Crocker Snyder, 63, a tough-on-crime former state judge and prosecutor, against incumbent Robert Morgenthau, 86, Manhattan’s longtime district attorney and heir…
Parking-garage mogul, publicity hound and overall one-of-a-kind character Abe Hirschfeld died of cancer August 9. The August 10 New York Post headline read, “A ‘Post’ Mortem for Crazy Abe Hirschfeld” (who had owned the paper for two weeks in 1993). The more sedate New York Times went with “Abe Hirschfeld, a Millionaire and an Eccentric,…
בײַ ייִדן איז פֿאַראַן אַן אַלטע טראַדיציע צו שרײַבן רײַסישע סגולות מיט ייִדישע אותיות.
