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In Israel, Still Dancing After All These Years
Israel will be 56 on April 25. They’ve been 56 trying years, so you’d think she wouldn’t be dancing as much as when she was younger. But the country seems to defy all odds. Though she dances differently than she did when she was young, she still dances with uncommon vigor and creativity. When Israel…
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El Al May Stop Operating Flights for Immigrants
JERUSALEM — El Al may stop flying immigrants to Israel from certain destinations after it is privatized, sources in the World Zionist Organization said. In a recent closed meeting of the WZO’s financial committee in Jerusalem, participants said with the takeover of El Al by Arkia, a privately owned Israeli airline, it may stop unprofitable…
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Japan Teaches One Jew the True Meaning of Diaspora
TOKYO — From my seat at the Seder table on the first night of Passover, I could see the lights of Roppongi, a fashionable entertainment district near the heart of Tokyo, where the streets were lined with club-goers and illuminated by ubiquitous neon signs. We were a small group huddled together, wandering Jews in a…
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Receptive Ears Hear About the Shoah in Poverty-Stricken Iowa
David Wendt teaches ninth-grade English at Keokuk High School, a public high school in Iowa where the 700 students are almost all of German descent. The town has 30 churches for a population that barely exceeds 10,000. Most of the students have never left the town — or met a Jew. Wendt, who is known…
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Iraqi Crisis May Hinder U.S. Reform Of Mideast
The unfolding chaos in Iraq is threatening the Bush administration’s ambitious plan to promote democratic reforms in the Middle East, experts and diplomats said. The administration’s so-called Greater Middle East initiative, which is to be presented formally during a meeting of the G-8 group of industrialized nations in early June, has already elicited criticism from…
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Mameles Marching For Choice
The March for Women’s Lives, likely to be the largest pro-choice march ever, will take place April 25 in Washington, D.C. I considered taking Josie, but hauling a 2-year-old by bus to the National Mall (a mall that inexplicably does not contain a Disney store) seems foolhardy. Though I suppose Josie’s arched-back hurling-self-on-the-ground earsplitting tantrum-throwing…
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Washington Puts Weight Behind Gaza Withdrawal
WASHINGTON — Caught in a deepening Iraqi quagmire with barely any international support, the Bush administration is lobbying the international community heavily to endorse Ariel Sharon’s plan for unilateral disengagement from Gaza. Even before the Israeli prime minister returned to Jerusalem from Washington to promote his disengagement plan among Likud party members, American envoys had…
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Two Holocaust-Ed Teachers Find That Empathy Is Often Born of Adversity
When New York City transplant Barbara Pordy began teaching Holocaust education in rural southern New Jersey five years ago, she had no idea her job would require instructing parents as well as students. Pordy, who lost several family members in the Holocaust, was taken aback when a young student asked her what she was doing…
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Ideology, Power and the War Against the West
The following is excerpted from “Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies” (The Penguin Press). Its authors are Ian Buruma, a professor at Bard College whose previous books include “God’s Dust” and “Behind the Mask,” and Avishai Margalit, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem whose previous books include “Idolatry” and “The Decent…
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PSALM 15
A recent article in The New York Times highlighted a vacancy in Queens — the poet laureate position held by Hal Sirowitz is now available. As the Times noted, “the position is not necessarily an exalted one,” yet Sirowitz has shown that exaltation is not the only quality we can look for in poetry. Plainness,…
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The Three ‘R’s
An e-mailer identified only as “Owen” writes: “I have a question that no one has been able to answer for me – even my rabbi. It is, why is the Israeli resh or ‘r’ pronounced in the uvula or back of the throat? The French and German ‘r’ is pronounced there too, but it is…
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