“Make Jewish babies.” Well, that’s one way to cure jetlag. Shlomo “Momo” Lifschitz, the hard-charging president of Oranim Educational Initiatives — today’s frontrunner in Jewish educational travel from Petach Tivah to Prague — assumed a despotic stance this past May before some 200 bleary-eyed Birthright Israel participants, gathered inside one air-conditioned Jerusalem conference room. The…
American opponents of the Gaza pullout drew limited support this week as they held several vigils and demonstrations in New York and other cities that warned the disengagement plan would only fuel terrorism. On Tuesday, as Israeli forces were preparing to forcibly remove thousands of Jewish settlers from Gaza and the northern West Bank, between…
If the free market is a good indicator of success, then American Jewish organizations struggling to recruit young members have something to learn from a small private tour operator in Israel called Oranim. Oranim is one of 20 nonprofit and commercial organizations vying to bring kids on Birthright Israel, the wildly successful five-year old program…
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza — For months, Israelis have been hearing about the massive opposition awaiting Israeli military and police forces should they try to implement the disengagement plan. But as the day finally arrived, the evacuating forces were met with scattered and leaderless resistance from youths in the streets and families waiting in their homes….
Just months after being introduced by a pair of mutual friends at a spiritual colony in Punjab, India, Ken Rosenblatt and Ruth Deyenne married July 19 in a small ceremony at the new couple’s home in Falls Church, Va. The service was presided over by Justice of the Peace Georgianne Atkins-Haville and was attended by…
For years, Nancy Kissel, a 41-year-old socialite and expatriate American, had been living the high life as a leading light in Hong Kong’s small but thriving Jewish community. Then she killed her investment banker husband, Robert Kissel. She bludgeoned him to death in their fashionable apartment in the ritzy Tai Tam neighborhood with a heavy…
‘Polish society is most paradoxical,” said Poland’s consul general, Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska, at the July 28 adieu luncheon in her honor, hosted by the American Jewish Committee at its headquarters. “It is the most pro-Israel in Europe today…. There is no such thing as being anti-Israel, yet antisemitism exists in Poland…. It’s kind of schizophrenic. Israel…
As the Senate girds itself for the upcoming battle over the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, a leading conservative journal has waded into the fray with a cover illustration depicting a prominent Democratic Jewish senator as a Tomás de Torquemada-style inquisitor. The illustration, which appears on the cover of the August 8 issue…
OAKLAND, Calif. — Guns were not a big deal in Sandy Froman’s life — until an intruder tried to break into her Los Angeles apartment one night about 25 years ago. Now she is the first Jewish person and only the second woman to serve as president of the National Rifle Association. “I think the…
The waning sunlight reflects off of the golden dome of the Moorish-style Neue Synagogue, located on Oranienburger Strasse. Built in 1866, the synagogue was a center of Jewish life in East Berlin’s Mitte neighborhood. Today its insides are mostly gone, the combined casualty of Kristallnacht and Allied bombing, and the Friday night service is held…
MONTREAL — The Quebec Bar is mulling disciplinary action against a prominent lawyer who argued before the country’s Supreme Court that Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler was part of a Jewish conspiracy to have his client deported. Guy Bertrand, a lawyer in Quebec City, was representing a Rwandan political exile, Léon Mugesera, whom the Canadian…
