WASHINGTON — Lawmakers passed an emergency aid package for the Palestinians this week, but some Jewish organizations and Palestinian activists are lamenting the measure as a missed opportunity to support Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Only about $140 million of the $200 million requested by the Bush administration will end up going to development projects…
Fancy Private Hospital is conveniently located in Upper Manhattan, a few blocks away from a subway stop. If you like, though, you can stroll to the main building along Madison Avenue, perhaps stopping at some of the boutiques you’ll find along the way. A few other students and I took such a relaxed trip to…
TEL AVIV — Israel’s chief of military intelligence, Aharon Ze’evi, said last week that Israel is not subject to any imminent nuclear threat and that the Palestinian Authority is gradually reining in militants. “There is currently no existential nuclear threat on Israel, but there are several Muslim states, with Iran at the forefront, which are…
I’ve been in a funereal mood of late, given to thinking a lot about death. No, my current state of mind has nothing to do with the passing of the pope or, for that matter, with that of Terri Schiavo. Rather, it has entirely to do with the sudden, sudden death of my longtime friend,…
TEL AVIV — To Israelis, Independence Day is by tradition a day of accounting. They learn how many of them there are (6.9 million last week — 76% of them Jewish — the Central Bureau of Statistics announced). They decide how they wish to be represented (in endless debates over who will win the prestigious…
Leon Berg remembers a Chabad Lubavitch rabbi knocking on the door of his fraternity bedroom in College Park, Md., one Saturday morning in the 1970s. Berg was otherwise engaged, to use a euphemism, and chased away the rabbi. Undeterred, the rabbi would periodically visit the brothers at Alpha Epsilon Pi — a Jewish fraternity house…
WASHINGTON — Steve Rosen, recently terminated as policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, expects to be indicted as soon as June, according to sources familiar with the case. Rosen has vehemently denied violating federal law and knowingly transmitting classified information. His attorney, Abbe Lowell, has issued a statement saying, “Steve Rosen never…
The eclectic list of guests that flooded Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse in Grand Central Terminal on April 14 for an installment of The Week magazine’s “Conversation” series, titled, “Middle East Peace: What Will It Take?” — moderated by the magazine’s editor at large, Sir Harold Evans — included actors Christopher Walken and Daniel Day-Lewis; music industry…
WASHINGTON — More than a week after a Pentagon official was charged with passing secret information to two employees of Washington’s pro-Israel lobby, Jewish communal leaders are still puzzled about the FBI’s investigation into the scandal. “There still are more questions than answers out there,” said one Jewish communal official, after participating Monday in a…
Once again, Dr. Joan Braman returns to Der Vinkl with her astute translations of English classics into Yiddish. This time we have the opening and closing stanzas of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s… Ode to the West Wind O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven…
Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, apologized last week for the group’s 2003 “Holocaust on Your Plate” ad campaign, which juxtaposed images of World War II concentration camps with contemporary images of animal mistreatment. Without the fanfare that usually accompanies announcements from the famously media-savvy group, the apology was quietly…
די „שלום־עליכם לעקציע“ וועט מען קענען הערן אויפֿן אָרט אָדער דורך דער אינטערנעץ.
