Kidney Cancer: The National Cancer Institute is on the lookout for Ashkenazi Jews who have a history of kidney cancer. Although Jews do not have the highest rate of kidney cancer in the United States, they have traditionally provided a useful genetic laboratory for geneticists because of the strong rates at which Jews historically have…
The Slovenes of Slovenia, the northwest corner of the former Yugoslavia, have, according to an April 17 New York Times article, a problem — which is why they’re about to change their flag. People confuse them with the Slovaks of Slovakia, the eastern half of the former Czechoslovakia, who have a similar flag. And if…
A leading U.S. Holocaust-denial group’s advertisements were pulled from a liberal weekly, The Nation, after protests from editorial staffers and Jewish organizations. The May 3 issue of the magazine featured a promotional ad for the book “The Founding Myths of Modern Israel.” The ad claimed that the book dissects historical myths used to justify Zionist…
Move over Madonna, there’s a new music video star in the house. The opera house, that is. Millennial Arts Productions’ Eléazar: Portrait of a Tenor and a Role” follows tenor Neil Shicoff as he performs Fromental Halevy’s “La Juive” in Vienna and shoots a music video of the opera’s “Rachel” aria with academy-award-winning director Sidney…
This weekend, much of Central and Eastern Europe will be celebrating as my country of Latvia and nine other new member-states officially join the European Union. Last month, five of those states — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia — also joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. For many in Central and Eastern Europe, membership…
Two years ago, I did a column on what it was like to have a porkola meatball baby. Family members hissed that I nursed her too often; strangers squeezed her thighs and raised their eyebrows; one reader sent an impassioned letter pleading with me to stick a pacifier in the kid’s mouth, because if I…
WASHINGTON — As sirens wailed in Israel on Sunday, marking the day on which Israelis commemorate the 20,196 soldiers and civilians who died in hostilities since the Jewish state was born, American Jewish war veterans gathered in Arlington National Cemetery to mark the 60th anniversary of the death of Major General Orde Wingate, the spiritual…
When Jews strike the breast for each item in the comprehensive list of human sins it is a communal confession; it was of the nation that holiness was required. I ask leave to think personally and tell an anecdote I’ve told before. In the bitterly cold winter of 1938 I sat in the vast glass-and-iron…
WASHINGTON — Israeli leaders fear that increasing international efforts to link Iraq’s troubles with Israel’s will lead to American pressure on Jerusalem for concessions. Fueling these fears is the Bush administration’s determination to stand by the United Nations special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, even after he partially blamed American support of Israeli policies for…
Nirit Artzi-Shapira flitted about the swanky Tel Aviv parent-child center Diada, clad in loose khakis and an orange top, her infant daughter snug against her chest in a blue sling. Children bring an easy smile to the face of Artzi-Shapira, a program director at Diada, who dedicates most days to their well-being. The state of…
TEL AVIV — Buoyed by a drop in terrorist attacks, rising economic indicators and a general feeling that a break may be coming in the deadlocked conflict with the Palestinians, Israelis celebrated their nation’s 56th birthday last Tuesday with a display of joie de vivre of the sort not seen in three years, since the…
