Dozens of prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis are backing an international effort to ban a fellow rabbi’s books, arguing that the works are heretical because they suggest the earth is much older than a literal reading of Genesis would suggest. The target of the campaign is Rabbi Nosson Slifkin, an ultra-Orthodox author known as the “Zoo Rabbi,”…
In what appears to be a devastating two-part blow to the Bush administration’s prewar case for toppling Saddam Hussein, the U.S. military has called off its failed two-year search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and a CIA-linked report claims that the Middle East country has replaced Afghanistan as the main training ground for…
Arthur Rosenblatt, one of the world’s leading authorities on museum architecture and the founding director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., died this week in New York of cancer. He was 73. Rosenblatt, a former New York City deputy commissioner of parks, joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1968 as…
H. David Dalquist, who died last Sunday at age 86, will be remembered as the inventor of the Bundt pan. But the rounded, circular baking pan was actually the brainchild of several women from Hadassah’s Minneapolis chapter who approached Dalquist with the idea in 1950. Fannie Schanfield, 87, a lifetime Minneapolis resident who joined Hadassah…
In an apparent victory for radical Muslims and the left wing of the American foreign policy establishment, President Bush has failed to take any action to renominate Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes to the board of the United States Institute of Peace. Bush appointed Pipes, a conservative Middle East analyst and syndicated columnist who has…
Michael Chertoff, the judge that President Bush nominated this week to head the vast Homeland Security bureaucracy, is drawing praise from Jewish communal leaders who say he will work hard to balance the need to protect Americans and to preserve civil liberties. Chertoff, 51, who would be Bush’s second Cabinet-level Jewish appointment, was the top…
WASHINGTON — Galvanized by President Bush’s nomination of Alberto Gonzales for attorney general, liberal American rabbis are vowing to fight alleged human-rights violations committed by the United States in the war on terrorism. Rabbis for Human Rights – North America, an organization representing 700 clergymen in North America, launched a campaign last week against the…
WASHINGTON — With President Bush set to unveil his plan to overhaul Social Security, several key Jewish organizations are expressing opposition to any significant changes in the system and are gearing up for what they describe as a major fight to protect the nation’s chief safety net. But while most Jewish groups oppose the president’s…
Three’s a Crowd?: After Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois was tapped this week to head the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, some observers were joking nervously that the Dems were stacking their leadership with too many big-city Jews. After all, Senator Charles Schumer of New York recently was named head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee,…
A revisionist study of Palestinian demographics — undermining the arguments for Prime Minister Sharon’s Gaza disengagement plan —was given red carpet treatment this week at several American citadels of pro-Israel support, including two conservative think tanks and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The controversial study, which was presented this week at…
Hi, I’m back. Don’t hug me; I am caked in sputum and sticky with breast milk. I am also angsting over how to file a column between bouts of nursing Maxine, who still won’t take a bottle with any predictability after 2.5 months on Earth; doing endless loads of laundry; pinching Josie’s nosebleeds, and deferring…
