The Jewish Theological Seminary of America’s new chief financial officer has resigned after just three months on the job at a time when the institution, the flagship of Conservative Judaism, is facing an unprecedented fiscal crisis. The departure of CFO Richard Bengloff marks the second resignation in four months of a top seminary financial officer….
There are times when you know, with absolute certainty, that you are the worst parent ever to walk the earth. These epic Bad Mommy Moments aren’t, like, Susan Smith or Andrea Yates-level crises, DefCon Five. Your kids live. But after a Bad Mommy Moment, you aren’t sure you want to. A couple of weeks back,…
A former top-level Pentagon official is opening up a new front in the Middle East: He’s taking aim at the neoconservatives who he says have been viewing the Iraqi election and other recent regional developments as an invitation to a full-scale democracy push. “We’re not going to transform the Middle East overnight,” Dov Zakheim told…
How do you pay tribute to musical legends? You put on a show! And that’s just what the Drama League did on stage at The Pierre hotel at the league’s January 31 benefit tribute to lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green. There were film clips from the Comden and Green classics “The Bandwagon,” “Singin’ in…
TEL AVIV — In a bid to supplant the two major English-language newspapers produced in Israel, Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s most influential and widely read newspaper, this week unveiled Ynetnews.com, its long-awaited English-language Web site. The centrist Yedioth is one of the three major Hebrew-language newspapers in Israel, along with Ma’ariv, a right-leaning tabloid, and Ha’aretz,…
In his typically incredible way, our steady contributor, Stanley Siegelman, has unearthed an otherwise obscure item about zoos. In Lithuania, high-ranking Orthodox rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv frowns on the operation of zoos. He even would forbid visiting a zoo. His authority is a 16th-century code of Jewish law that bars the raising of animals for…
A pro-Palestinian professor at Columbia University, hailed by some Jewish students as a model instructor, is being barred by the New York City Department of Education from lecturing public-school teachers. A spokesman for the school board attributed the move against Rashid Khalidi, the Arab-American director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute, to “past statements” on the…
Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University, will not be in attendance when hundreds of Orthodox liberals gather Sunday in New York for the biennial Edah conference. The official explanation: He has a previously scheduled out-of-town fund-raising event. Joel’s absence, however, is likely to be interpreted by many attendees as a capitulation to right-wing rabbis at…
WASHINGTON — The campaign to stop Senate Republicans from banning filibusters on federal judicial nominees received a boost this week from an influential Jewish civil-rights agency. After sitting on the fence for months, the American Jewish Committee decided to oppose changes to the Senate filibuster regulations proposed by GOP leaders. The proposed changes are aimed…
Gannon Fire: The conservative Web site linked to the latest White House propaganda scandal was touched by an earlier controversy: In 2003 it frequently published a columnist accused by critics of trafficking in antisemitism. The Web site, GOPUSA, is the main outlet for Talon News Service, which until recently employed the disgraced White House reporter…
Even as Israeli and Palestinian leaders talk of a breakthrough, two more mainline Protestant denominations — the United Church of Christ and Disciples of Christ — are now weighing divestment proposals aimed at pressuring Israel to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank. The Presbyterian Church (USA) approved a plan last summer to begin the…
