PRAGUE — An ugly struggle for control of the Prague Jewish community ended officially late last month when the Czech Federation of Jewish Communities recognized a loose-knit opposition group as the legitimate steward of one of Europe’s oldest Jewish communities. In fact, however, the fight goes on despite the January 20 decision. The ousted community…
‘The Jew of today needs, more than ever, a spiritual influence as a bulwark against worry, fear and anxiety. He needs that source of inspiration that will bring peace to his restless soul, free his heart from forebodings and cares… and replenish the springs of his happiness.” Although these passages strike a decidedly New Age-y…
Elation in Washington over Ukraine’s so-called Orange Revolution gave way to red faces this week after the White House was forced to distance itself from a controversial Ukrainian American polemicist who was part of the American delegation to the inauguration of Ukraine’s new president, Viktor Yushchenko. The disputed envoy, Myron Kuropas, a longtime GOP activist…
On the 115th yahrzeit of poet Mikhl Gordon, the Forverts’s Pearls of Yiddish Poetry featured this famous Maskl. At the time of his life, this movement in which Gordon played a prominent role was the ideological challenger of the Hasidim, who were the fervent advocates of the “good old-time religion” that raised the heart above…
One Tuesday night this past October, Rabbi Mark Raphael and 75 of his congregants from Kehilat Shalom squeezed, along with 1,100 other people, into an Adventist church in Silver Spring, Md. The interfaith crowd had gathered to make some urgent requests. But these requests didn’t come in the forms of prayers, and they weren’t directed…
Last Thursday afternoon, Continental Flight #0014 landed at Newark Airport, and among the passengers streaming out of the plane was a group of 10 teenage boys returning from winter break in the North Pacific. However, this was no ordinary vacation. The teenagers were Orthodox students from the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy (Yeshiva University High School…
As the battle over President Bush’s second term agenda heats up, two of the most important Jewish organizations dealing with domestic policy are losing top staff members who would have been responsible for formulating a response to the administration’s expected cuts in federal spending on social welfare programs. United Jewish Communities, the national roof body…
Dais-designated New York Post columnist Cindy Adams — on line with power attorney Barry Slotnick for the VIP reception at the January 17 Congress of Racial Equality Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Living the Dream 2005” dinner — was miffed because her red plastic VIP admission bracelet was delayed and the promised-to-be-there recipient of CORE’s…
WASHINGTON — The Bible Belt might represent the heart of Bush country, but a new study suggests that even among Jews, blue quickly turns to red at the sanctuary door. Released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, the new study found that while Jews generally tend to be more liberal than any…
My first rotation as a medical student is psychiatry, that branch of medicine that patrols the border between sane and insane. But as is well known to any observer of human behavior, the sane are sane up until the point when you start looking at them with an analytic eye. Then everyone seems to need…
WASHINGTON — As President Bush plans to ask Congress for additional aid for the Palestinian Authority, Israel is preparing the ground for its own supplemental request to help underwrite its planned withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank. Israel will ask for funds to establish a series of new crossing points along its…
