A high-powered group of 20 Jewish intellectuals met behind closed doors near Washington late last month to discuss the future of the Jewish people — and the mood was not optimistic. Harvard University president Lawrence Summers, former Israeli Cabinet minister Natan Sharansky and Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler were among the select group of…
Chief Rabbi Knighted Last week, Queen Elizabeth knighted Britain’s chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, marking the queen’s 79th birthday. She bestowed the vaunted “Sir” title on Sacks on June 11 in recognition of his services to the Jewish community and interfaith relations. “This is an honor not just for me but for the Jewish community and…
Lillian Lux Burstein, an internationally acclaimed doyenne of the Yiddish theater, died in New York last week of natural causes. She was 86. Burstein is best known for the musical acts she produced and staged as the matriarch of The Four Bursteins, a troupe composed of herself, her husband — famed actor Pesach’ke (Paul) Burstein…
A New York assemblyman who started his political career as a lieutenant of the extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane has been using his taxpayer-funded staff to organize missions to Israel protesting the planned disengagement from Gaza. Last week State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, Brooklyn Democrat and Orthodox Jew, led his second mission to Israel in recent months….
There is nothing surprising about the last name Schwartz appearing on the roster of speakers for the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, but Stephen Suleyman Schwartz is no ordinary Schwartz. The son of a Jewish father, Schwartz later became a Muslim and is now the director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism. Next week, at…
What happens when you call a mass demonstration and only a few dozen people show up? That’s more or less what happened when Free Muslims Against Terrorism organized a Washington rally last month. The group’s founder, Bethlehem-born Kamal Nawash, had hoped that the May 14 rally would send “a very clear message to the Arab…
A decade after he shot to fame as a Holocaust restitution lawyer, attorney Ed Fagan now does most of his business from a cell phone. Deeply in debt, he no longer has an office and is the target of an ethics investigation that threatens to disbar him. But this has not stopped him from continuing…
A new Iraqi law allowing Jews worldwide to file claims for lost property is being hailed by advocates for the rights of Jews expelled from Arab countries — but only a tiny percentage of Jews from Iraq qualify for compensation. Justice for Jews From Arab Countries, a coalition of major Jewish organizations, praised the newly…
A Rubicon in Israeli politics will be crossed by early September, when the evacuation of around 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank is scheduled to be completed. What will follow on the day after disengagement is still very much in the air, but this much is clear: The situation will…
abbi Jonathan Gerard of Easton, Pa., writes: “One often hears Americans using the term ‘kosher.’ Hearing it on National Public Radio recently prompted me to wonder what the speaker actually meant by it. In Hebrew it means ‘fit; proper; according to [Jewish] law.’ Could it be that in English the term is used in the…
In what its supporters hope will be a repeat of the successful divestment campaign against apartheid-era South Africa, security hawks and human-rights advocates are joining forces in an increasingly successful grass-roots campaign to convince universities and public pension funds to divest from Sudan. Liberal groups are pressing universities and states to divest from Sudan over…
