At first glance, Burton Kaplan hardly seems like a formidable figure, those who know him say. At 71, he’s a bit frail and by all accounts half blind, with one bum eye peering out at the world from behind oversize glasses. He’s soft spoken, with a Brooklyn accent said to be as thick as cholent…
Once again Al Grand returns to Der Vinkl with another of his Yiddish translations of the works of the Savoyards (Gilbert and Sullivan). Grand has been not only a translator, but also an actor who has performed in his own creations. Indeed his life has been so involved with the Savoyards that his e-mail address…
PABBO, Uganda — Ana quietly joined the line, her 2-year-old daughter, Margaret, in tow. She carefully placed her green and yellow plastic containers behind the hundreds of others, and then joined the other women to chat and to wait for water. It is a daily ritual by which Ana receives water for her family of…
WASHINGTON — The FBI investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has in recent months eroded the reputation and credibility of the powerful pro-Israel lobby, Washington insiders said. But the firing of Steve Rosen, Aipac’s policy director, is the first tangible price — and a very dear one — that the organization is paying…
Africa lags behind other regions not only in terms of development aid but also when it comes to emergency relief, according to the United Nations’s top humanitarian official. “It is one of the biggest imbalances of our time — compassion,” undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland told the Forward in a phone interview. “We are…
British Prime Minister Tony Blair goes to the voters next week to seek a third term, following a brief but heated election campaign in which his most controversial decision, taking his nation to war in Iraq, hardly played a role. But while the Middle East appears to have caused few problems for Blair during the…
ZOA: No Vote on Aid The Zionist Organization of America will not lobby against American aid to cover Israel’s Gaza withdrawal costs, ZOA National President Morton Klein said. Last week Klein told the Forward that his organization, which strongly opposes the Gaza redeployment plan, would consider lobbying against Israeli requests for American financial aid to…
MOSCOW — The agenda for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s historic visit to Israel is undoubtedly full, and the reasons for the visit are quite numerous, but analysts say that a largely overlooked factor may be Putin’s own religious views. Official sources in Russia indicated that the visit was meant to show that relations between Moscow…
ISTANBUL — The recent announcement that Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will visit Israel signals the possibility of the two Middle Eastern allies coming to the end of a rocky period in their relationship, officials in Turkey and Israel say. “The significance for both sides is that the official declaration of the visit means…
CAESAREA, Israel — Thousands of Israelis lined up this week outside the municipal auditorium in Or Akiva, south of Haifa, to pay their last respects to Ezer Weizman, Israel’s seventh president, who died of pneumonia April 24 at age 80. A nephew of Israel’s founding president, Weizman was a larger-than-life figure, a dashing fighter-pilot who…
JERUSALEM — The white, blue and red flags flying in the streets of Jerusalem this week signaled a historic visit: the arrival of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the first head of state from Moscow to visit since the establishment of the State of Israel. The improvement in the political atmosphere since the death of Yasser…
די „שלום־עליכם לעקציע“ וועט מען קענען הערן אויפֿן אָרט אָדער דורך דער אינטערנעץ.
