A number of readers have written in about my August 13 column, “Questioning Virginity.” All have taken issue with my saying that the Greek word parthenos, in the Septuagint’s translation of the Hebrew almah in Isaiah 7:14, means “virgin.” Thus, for example, Peter Siegel comments: “You have fallen into the linguistic equivalent of the urban…
His patients know him as Dr. Barnett Zumoff, head of the department of endocrinology and metabolism at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. Members of The Forward Association and the Arbeter Ring know him as a macher — an important person — in these and other institutions and movements in American Jewish life. Readers…
When Howard Rieger becomes president of United Jewish Communities on September 1, he will take the reins of an organization confronting defining questions about its role as the coordinating body for 155 North American Jewish federations. After three years in which giving to the federation’s annual campaign has declined, UJC has struggled with its budgetary…
Gal Friedman became the first Israeli ever to win an Olympic gold medal, when he won the windsurfing event in Athens on Wednesday. Friedman, who took home the bronze medal in Atlanta in 1996, is also the first Israeli to win two Olympic medals. After Friedman crossed the finish line Wednesday, he took a victory…
The lawyers representing Golan Cipel, the Israeli at the heart of the political tumult in the Garden State, are attempting to debunk claims that their client was a partner or pawn in an elaborate scheme to bring down New Jersey Governor James McGreevey. In an exclusive interview with the Forward, one of Cipel’s two attorneys,…
COVENTRY, Vt. — This weekend, on the 35th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival, the band Phish, arguably the kingpin of alternative rock bands of the last three decades, played its last gig. A crowd of close to 70,000 trudged through wind, rain, mud and muck — remnants of Florida’s Hurricane Charley — for a two-day…
The numbers reeled off about Darfur tell their own story: more than 1 million displaced people, almost 200,000 refugees, 30,000 dead, all in just 18 months. All of this death and destruction, the result of a brutal Sudanese government crackdown on a rebel insurgency. But as with so many immense tragedies, the scale of the…
Following a controversial speech by Vice President Dick Cheney, the father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is urging Democrats and Republicans to refrain from turning his son’s death into a political football. Judea Pearl expressed his sentiments after Cheney’s August 12 speech, in which the vice president blasted Democratic presidential nominee Senator…
The appointment of Alon Pinkas to head the American Jewish Congress was put on hold this week pending resolution in Jerusalem of accusations that the former high-profile Israeli diplomat violated his country’s civil-service regulations. The AJCongress decision comes after the Israeli press reported that Civil Service Commissioner Shmuel Hollander was considering criminal proceedings against Pinkas…
A “Newsdesk” brief in the July 30 issue, supplied by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, contained incorrect information on the American Civil Liberties Union’s protest of the Ford Foundation’s new anti-terrorism rules. The JTA news brief said that the ACLU, despite its protests, said it would continue to accept money from the Ford Foundation and abide…
JERUSALEM — Egypt has reached agreements with Hamas and Islamic Jihad on their activities in Gaza after Israel’s disengagement, according to a report this week in the London-based Arabic-language daily Asharq Al-Awsat. Senior members of Islamic Jihad met last weekend with Egyptian diplomats at Cairo’s representation in Gaza to move ahead with the Egyptian post-disengagement…
