A perennially debated issue in linguistics in recent decades has been the question of just what aspects of language are “hard-wired” into our brains and what aspects are contingent on chance developments affecting specific languages or groups of languages. Take the basic word order of the simplest sentences that we utter. If you wish to…
The fallout from a rowdy conservative conference last month is exposing the fault lines in the Republican Party between Christian conservatives and small-government libertarians — including many Jewish activists. At the Conservative Political Action Conference, held February 17-19 in Washington, attendees loudly booed a speaker who spoke in defense of President Bush’s proposed immigration reforms….
UTRECHT, Netherlands— Near the bustling heart of this Dutch university town, at Springweg 162, there stands an imposing brick building with gold Hebrew letters engraved above the doorway. But the building exterior belies what occurs inside. On Saturdays, no prayers are read from the Star-of-David-adorned altar. The Holy Ark, which used to house three Torahs,…
The American Jewish Congress, a group known for its historic role at the cutting edge of liberal Jewish activism, signed a strategic agreement this week with a Russian Jewish organization that has close ties to the Kremlin and that is dominated by the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement. The agreement, pledging to fight “religious and ethnic bigotry,”…
The recent news that a part of Sing Sing, the New York State penitentiary that was home for a spell to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, as well to as Murder, Inc., the Brooklyn-based gang of ruthless racketeers, is going to be transformed into a museum brings to mind an aspect of our past that many,…
JERUSALEM — Standing last week on the finest piece of artificial grass in Israel’s capital, Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, raised this year’s Super Bowl trophy in his right hand and took an ancient oath. “If I forget you, oh Jerusalem,” he declared, “may my right hand wither.” Fresh off his team’s…
Even God needs help when making miracles. He sent a wind to split the Red Sea rather than doing it directly; Moses took intensive elocution lessons before he could shout the Ten Commandments down to the Israelites, and the walls of Jericho could well have been jerry-built by history’s first unscrupulous contractors. Add to this…
Gila Ramras-Rauch, an internationally distinguished scholar of Hebrew, Israeli and Holocaust literature and a leading authority on the writings of Aharon Appelfeld, died February 16 in her home in Brookline, Mass. She was 71. Ramras-Rauch was the Lewis H. and Selma Weinstein Professor of Jewish Literature at Boston’s Hebrew College, where she taught for 23…
The arrival of Catherine Zeta-Jones with husband Michael Douglas at the February 7 Red Ball at The Pierre dazzled the 500 guests, celebrities and paparazzi, who went into flash overdrive. Alluding to event honorees Carey Lowell and her husband, Richard Gere, emcee Christine Baranski gushed, “This feels like a ‘Chicago’ reunion” — a reference to…
Democrats are slamming President Bush for failing to condemn antisemitic remarks made during a high-level counterterrorism conference in Saudi Arabia that was attended by his top homeland security adviser. At the conference, a Saudi poet recited a poem in which he condemned Osama bin Laden before declaring that the Al Qaeda chief “was sent by…
Just before 6 a.m. on each weekday, members of Toronto’s Beth Avraham Yosef synagogue make their way across a snowy parking lot to the first of the congregation’s three daily Talmud classes. About half of them are holding under their arms a volume of the Artscroll Talmud. According to the synagogue’s religious leader, Rabbi Baruch…
