Julie Chen, anchor of CBS News’s “The Early Show,” served as emcee at the May 19 UJA-Federation of New York Steven J. Ross Humanitarian Award Dinner, held at The Waldorf-Astoria. The evening’s honoree was Viacom chairman of the board and CEO Sumner Redstone, whom Chen described as “a man who has built what is… the…
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — Conservative and Hasidic rabbis often disagree over religious matters, but in this South Florida town they’re even butting heads over what to name a neighborhood park. At issue is the campaign by some local residents to name the park after city commissioner and former mayor Sal Oliveri, who has played the lead…
WASHINGTON — The contents of the newly released federal indictment against Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, charging him with illegally disclosing secret information to an Israeli diplomat and to pro-Israel lobbyists, are heightening concerns in the Jewish community that a second round of indictments could damage the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the leading pro-Israel lobbying…
SAN FRANCISCO — The clock was running down and California Assemblyman Mark Leno was a few votes short, watching his same-sex marriage bill slide toward oblivion. For the second year in a row, Leno, a Jewish Democrat from San Francisco and one of the state legislature’s six openly gay lawmakers, was racing to beat the…
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…
In the first political fallout over the allegations of proselytizing and religious coercion at the U.S. Air Force Academy, the father of one complainant is vowing to oust his congresswoman over what he claims is her lack of action on the matter. New Mexico attorney Mikey Weinstein is pledging that he will work to unseat…
At first glance, Isabel Rose, the author of a new novel dedicated to skewering the Jewish American Princess, strikes you as exactly what she professes to mock: Tiny, well dressed, 10 minutes late and drinking from my glass of pinot grigio, she seems a perfect (albeit red-haired) JAP stereotype. I’ve been sitting at the crowded…
A recent opinion essay in Forward Forum (“From ‘Balance’ to Censorship: Bush’s Cynical Plan for NPR,” May 27) was construed by some readers to imply incorrectly that Camera, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, had called for readers of the Los Angeles Times to cancel their subscriptions. In fact, Camera never…
Modernity, it was once thought, wreaked havoc with religious tradition, rendering centuries-old rituals obsolete. We now know better. Modernity has not only made room for tradition, it has even given birth to a number of new rituals of its own, among which the rite of confirmation, often celebrated on Shavuot, may well take pride of…
There is a drama performed in hospitals that is as essential and unchanging as davening, or eating breakfast. It’s the doctors’ twice-daily bedside perambulation, known to everyone as “rounds.” Whenever a medical student walks into a patient’s room, it’s an act for both concerned. Perhaps the metaphor is inexact. Each actually wants to tell the…
a power struggle between two of the country’s most influential jewish politicians appears to have torpedoed new york city’s bid to build a new football stadium and bring the 2012 olympics to the big apple. The push for a new stadium had been spearheaded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose dream it was to…
