The February 25 article “Israeli Designer Goes Her Own Way” stated that some of fashion designer Roni Rabl’s source material comes from a factory in Gaza. The factory in question is at the Erez Junction, which is considered part of Israel. The March 4 article “Top Jewish Council Urges Congress Not To Block Plan for…
On his 50th yahrzeit, poet Yosef Rolnick was featured in the Forverts on the pages devoted to Pearls of Yiddish Poetry. Rolnick’s poems were the works of a man whose life was crammed with loneliness, sorrow and sentiment. What follows is his most famous poem, “Zun in Mayrev” (“The Sun in the West”), as transliterated…
They are among the most popular children’s books on the market today, inspired by the evangelical Christian “Left Behind” book series, which features gory depictions of the annihilation of Jews and other nonbelievers at Armageddon. “Left Behind: The Kids,” an ongoing series aimed at evangelical Christian children ages 10 to 14, revolves around the adventures…
The dispute over whether Yiddish will survive or not — and if so, in what guise — has lasted nearly as long as modern Yiddish itself. Nearly 100 years ago, in l908, the question of what Yiddish is and what its future might hold was posed sharply at a conference held in Chernowitz, Romania (now…
In an effort to make his bloody blockbuster about the death of Jesus more palatable, Oscar-winning director Mel Gibson has edited about six minutes of violent footage from his 2004 hit, “The Passion of the Christ.” The film, which some scholarly critics say ahistorically blames Jews for Jesus’ death while promoting ancient anti-Jewish stereotypes, reopened…
The latest offering from the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre is, quite literally, a drag. “The Megile of Shloyme Klugerman,” the company’s Purim shpiel, goes on the road later this month. A family-oriented production with a twist, the newly revised musical — based on the ancient story of Queen Esther — features an all-male cast. Although modern…
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…
