In the names of God, one fashion designer is producing T-shirts and skirting conflict with the famed Los Angeles-based Kabbalah Centre. Ayelet Aviv, an Israeli artist from Mitzpe Ramon in Israel, recently went solo with her line of Kabbalah-inspired T-shirts after an alleged collaborative agreement with The Kabbalah Centre fell through because she refused to…
Is Ariel Sharon an Israeli de Gaulle, come to power promising to implement the program of the nationalist right and instead becoming the vehicle for carrying out the ideas which the left had been unable to implement on its own? Will the death of Yasser Arafat really clear the way of the stumbling blocks that…
In this third and last column on linguist Dovid Katz’s theory of the origins of Yiddish, let us pose the question: Is there any historical evidence for a migration around the year 1000 C.E. or later of a community of Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East to a German-speaking area of Europe — a migration…
Everyone in the Middle East is crossing their fingers these days, hoping that regional and international leaders will not blow yet another opportunity for Arab-Israeli peace. The role of Palestinian and Israeli leaders is clearly an important factor in moving the peace process ahead, but let their be no mistake about it: The crucial factor…
The author of the following poem was Pinhas ha-Kohen, a prolific liturgical poet who seems to have lived in eighth-century Tiberias. His recounting of the story of the encounter between Joseph and Judah as a dramatic dialogue is somewhat different from that of the narrator in our portion. In Genesis, Judah approaches Joseph in order…
Give peace a holiday? That’s the new idea being floated by the head of Conservative Judaism’s synagogue movement. Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, issued an essay this week proposing that, considering all the “insecurity, violence and frustration” on Earth today, the time has come for Jews across…
Profound insight into human relationships and destinies sometimes can be revealed in the simple experiences of two childhood friends, as in a poem by Isaac Reingold (1873-1903), written about Shmilik and Gavrilik, that first appeared in the Forverts on May 9, 1897. The transliterated text that follows is taken from the compendium “Mir Trogn a…
More than 500 plaintiffs representing families of Israeli victims of terrorism are expected to file soon a multibillion dollar federal lawsuit in New York accusing the Arab Bank of Jordan of abetting Palestinian terrorist groups, the Forward has learned. A high-profile team of American and Israeli lawyers, led by Ron Motley and Allan Gerson, are…
At the November 21 Metropolitan Opera Guild’s “Hart to Hart: A Celebration of the Lives and Achievements of Kitty Carlisle Hart and Moss Hart” at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, those in the audience who never knew or who had forgotten Carlisle Hart’s vocal pyrotechnics discovered what a magnificent soprano the “To Tell the Truth”…
The nation’s leading Orthodox rabbinical organization is being accused of betraying women who say they were sexually abused or harassed by a prominent New York rabbi hailed for counseling women about their troubled marriages. Critics of the Rabbinical Council of America are blasting the group for giving Rabbi Mordecai Tendler and his attorney, Arnold Kriss,…
WASHINGTON — American officials are pressing jailed leader Marwan Barghouti to withdraw from next month’s Palestinian elections, in what some insiders describe as a desperate attempt to salvage the newfound progress in the peace process and avoid an embarrassing blow to America’s push for democracy in the Arab world. The Forward has learned that American…
