Posted on the Web site of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance is a prayer composed by Rabbi Mordecai Tendler on behalf of agunot — Jewish women who are unable to obtain a religious divorce decree from their husbands. Tendler’s touching supplication, asking God to “deliver all the agunot from the bonds of their plight,” aptly…
Gay Parade Slammed Evangelical Christians in America and ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel are uniting to block an international gay pride parade in Jerusalem this summer. The anti-gay coalition, which includes Israeli lawmakers, aims to collect 1 million signatures opposing the World Pride Parade in Jerusalem. The parade is part of a 10-day global interfaith gay…
Dan Mosenkis of Fair Lawn, N.J., writes: A while back there was a contest to find English words which meant both one thing and its opposite; the only ones I remember are “cleave” and “sanction.” It occurs to me, though, that the Hebrew root shakhah. also yields two such words, nishkah., “forgotten,” and shakhiah., “common”…
A convicted felon has been elected leader of a government-funded Chabad-dominated community council in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Despite serving a 15-month jail term for bank fraud, Rabbi Moshe Rubashkin captured 71% of the 1,208 votes cast in the recent election to head the Crown Heights Community Council. The council, a nonprofit group,…
Though the holiday of Purim is celebrated by Jews worldwide, the story, based as it is in Persia, has special resonance for the Jews of Iran. Recent decades have proved difficult for Persian Jews, many of whom fled the country after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. From a community of about 100,000, now an estimated 25,000…
A partnership between two American Jewish organizations dedicated to selling Israel’s story to the world has broken up after disagreements emerged over what that story should be. The Philadelphia Jewish Federation withdrew its $100,000 donation to a Washington-based group, The Israel Project, which had planned to use the money to set up an office in…
Step into any synagogue on Purim this year, and prepare to be assaulted by a terrifyingly ferocious din during the reading of the Megillah. At every mention of the name Haman, congregants interrupt the reader, who often must pause for 10 seconds or more as a roar of clapping, booing, hooting, hissing, whistling and foot…
Publicizing Israel’s plan to withdraw from Gaza might hold the key to winning public support for the Jewish state, according to a new survey released by The Israel Project, a group working to promote Israel’s image. In the post-Yasser Arafat era, Americans generally still side with Israel, considered a like-minded ally, and show hostility toward…
The word purim means “lots” — as in lots drawn in games of chance — and in the Purim story it is by lot that the time of the Jews’ demise is decided. Despite their contributions to government and to society, the assimilated Jews of the ancient Persian court occasionally suffered the wrath of their…
JERUSALEM — The Zionist movement, created a century ago, has come in for some rough treatment in the Jewish state lately. The World Zionist Organization, Theodor Herzl’s original platform, was singled out as one of the main culprits in a devastating report, submitted to the government last week, on government ministries “and public agencies” whose…
We love Purim, but there sure is a lot to do. Like hamantaschen, the holiday is jam-packed. You’ve got to assemble and deliver shalach manot, hear the Megillah twice, give charity, plus eat and drink to excess. How do you fit it all in? This year, make the most of your time by multitasking with…
