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Neo-Nazi Brotherhoods Gain Influence
BERLIN — Less than 24 hours had passed since Thorsten Heise and his fellow neo-Nazis were forced to call off their planned show of force here last week. Their failed efforts on the 60th anniversary of the fall of the Third Reich were being celebrated in local papers, under banner headlines such as “A Red-letter…
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Africa Question Puts Ross on Hot Seat in Iowa
DES MOINES, Iowa — Dennis Ross, America’s point man on the peace process during the 1990s, came to Iowa last week to talk about the Arab-Israeli conflict. But his speech, made to 450 people at a local Conservative synagogue, took an unexpected turn when a tall man in traditional African garb approached the microphone during…
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Mayor Virtually Assured of Jewish Agency Job
JERUSALEM — Ze’ev Bielski, mayor of the Tel Aviv suburb of Ra’anana, can be seen in the mornings opening car doors for school children, ushering them toward their classrooms with a smile. Now Bielski, 58, may be heading to one of the most powerful offices in the Jewish world: chairman of the Jewish Agency for…
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Race Tension Vexes Contest For Senate In Maryland
Racial tensions are simmering in Maryland’s Democratic senatorial primary race, in which a nationally known black leader, former congressman Kweisi Mfume, is squaring off against a white congressman, Ben Cardin, who is Jewish. While the contest is still in its early stages, and other candidates — both black and white — may enter the race,…
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Dershowitz Fires Back at His Critics
An academic battle simmering for two years is coming to a boil with the release next month of a new book taking aim at Harvard University professor Alan Dershowitz and his support for Israel. In the new book, “Beyond Chutzpah,” DePaul University professor Norman Finkelstein attempts to discredit Dershowitz’s 2003 bestseller, “The Case for Israel.”…
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Sharon and a Critic Jostle for Limelight As Gaza Pullout Feud Comes to America
When Israeli Prime Minister Sharon comes to the United States this week to stump for his Gaza disengagement plan, he will be competing for the spotlight with the most prominent opponent of the initiative, Natan Sharansky. Sharansky, the former Soviet refusenik, resigned from Sharon’s government two weeks ago to protest the disengagement plan, but he…
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Newsdesk May 20, 2005
Chief Rabbi Cleared Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi was cleared of complicity in the assault on a yeshiva student who had courted his daughter. Attorney General Menachem Mazuz recommended Wednesday that no charges be brought against Rabbi Shlomo Amar in connection with the incident that took place over Passover, officials said. Amar has denied any knowledge…
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Shamash U.: A School For Unsung Heroes
It is an unsung job with many names: shamash, sexton, beadle, ritual director, hazzan sheini — even bar or bat mitzvah teacher. Whatever you call it, synagogue movement insiders say, the real problem is the dearth of skilled laymen who are willing and able to step in. Whether the task is chanting Torah, blowing shofar…
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Genocidal Threats Demand More Than Just Memorializing
The recent opening of Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and of Yad Vashem’s new museum in Jerusalem are important and welcome developments. But we must go beyond our singular focus on memorializing the Holocaust. We must help people realize that genocidal violence is a threat to all people. We must demand of…
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An Awakened Soul
Is spiritual development really as important as intellectual development? Today, one often finds in Jewish culture a mutual suspicion between those who value intellectual education (and its likely material consequences) and the “spiritual” types who like to chant, meditate and “explore their feelings.” On the one side, many well-schooled Jewish adults regard today’s would-be mystics…
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Ukrainians Want Jews Probed on War Crimes
TORONTO — For years, the Ukrainian-Canadian community has been on the defensive over the Jewish community’s allegations that Nazi war criminals — many of them of Ukrainian origin — were living in Canada. Now, a Ukrainian-Canadian organization has turned the tables by accusing several elderly Jews of having been involved in Soviet war crimes. The…
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