JERUSALEM — An angry e-mail message sent by a leading Conservative rabbi to his movement, in which he slammed it for refusing entry to a worshiper during Rosh Hashanah services in Jerusalem, has now generated a repentant retraction. Rabbi Daniel Gordis, the director of the prestigious Mandel Jerusalem Fellows program, who wrote the letter, recently…
Yiddish songs and poetry cover the gamut of human emotions, from moaning and groaning to dancing and prancing, and all that falls between a sad tomorrow and days without sorrow. What follows is a poem by Soviet Jewish poet Yousef Kotlier (1908-1962) as it appears in transliterated form in “Songs of Generations” compiled by Eleanor…
Conservative Christian groups are stepping up their calls against Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the senior Jewish Republican lawmaker in Washington, whom they are trying to prevent from assuming the chairmanship of the influential Senate Judiciary Committee. Specter, a moderate who recently won a fifth term, was instrumental in torpedoing the 1980s Supreme Court nomination…
JDate offers Jewish singles a place to mix and mingle online. The Web site Jewishpartisans.org promises to imbue young Jews with a more muscular sense of Jewish identity through stories of resistance to the Holocaust. Toldot.org extends to the “next generation” an online Jewish museum without the hassles of an overpriced café. The Internet is…
In order to explain the difference between the people of fate and the nation of destiny, it is worth taking note of the antithesis between camp (machaneh) and congregation (edah). The camp is created as a result of the desire for self-defense and is nurtured by a sense of fear; the congregation is created as…
When Dora Apsan Sorell, 83, saw a newscast in August about the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, it conjured up horrific memories of her time at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Earlier that same day, Sorell, a retired doctor, had received a reparations check for the slave labor she did during the war. With the images of…
When Israeli scientists Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko won the Nobel Prize in chemistry last month, plenty of people had reason to celebrate. Beyond the two researchers, all Israelis can take pride in the country’s first Nobel science prize. Cancer patients everywhere can be heartened by the breakthrough research that earned the pair such an…
As half of the wildly popular pop/rock duo Evan and Jaron, Evan Lowenstein is accustomed to showering fans with autographs, complimentary CDs and concert memorabilia. But lately, he’s even been giving away his own jewelry — specifically, his “Common Ground” necklaces, which he says are a symbol of his love for Israel. “I can never…
Yasser Arafat has been a walking symbol. With his own hands he created an image — part Fidel Castro, part Che Guevara, part Marshall Tito — of a man unifying his people under a pseudo-liberal and sole rule. The obscurity surrounding his birthplace, the somewhat hazy story of his life, his pretensions of being an…
On the Sunday of her bat mitzvah weekend last month, Rebecca Schwartz — dressed in pink, as composed as any 13-year-old could be and displaying a set of straight teeth in a wide smile — rose before a crowd. She did not read from the Torah, as she had done with perfect pitch the previous…
WASHINGTON — As Yasser Arafat exits the world stage, international leaders and American diplomats are pressing the White House to take aggressive steps to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. At the top of the list is British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is scheduled to meet with President Bush for a post-election powwow later this…
