One in a series of occasional excepts from books that catch our eye. This month, Random House releases “Why Courage Matters : The Way to a Braver Life,” by Senator John McCain, with Mark Salter. In it, McCain offers a number of profiles in courage, including one chapter on Hannah Senesh, the young Jewish woman…
WASHINGTON — The White House decision to side with Israel on the issues of Palestinian refugees and West Bank settlements is producing an international backlash that could undermine efforts to implement Prime Minister Sharon’s Gaza disengagement plan, diplomats and Middle East experts said this week. American officials have been urging Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority…
When Sara Charmé-Zane, 13, reminisces about her bat mitzvah, she doesn’t prattle on about disc jockeys. Or outfits. Or presents. After being encouraged by her rabbi to do a “mitzvah project” to mark the rite of passage, she was uninspired by the idea of simply writing a check to a charity. So she began thinking…
Mordechai Vanunu, the convicted nuclear spy, slammed the State of Israel and its law enforcement agencies immediately upon his release Wednesday morning from jail, but said he had no intention of harming the country. Vanunu, 49, walked out of Ashkelon’s Shikma prison a free man around 11 a.m. Israeli time, as his 18-year prison term…
Heavyweight boxer Roman Greenberg’s record reached 15 consecutive wins last week at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. The 6-foot-3, 227-pound Israeli pugilist with a Star of David on his shorts took on New York’s Jason Gethers in the ring, scoring a technical knockout — better known as a TKO — in the sixth…
Pro-Israel Socialist Ousted The main advocate for tighter European Union oversight over funding of the Palestinian Authority claims he was sidelined by his own party because of his Middle East positions. Francois Zimeray, a French Socialist Party member of the European Parliament, has been kept off the party’s list of candidates for the upcoming European…
There are some 3,000 Jews living here in Germany’s second-largest city, Hamburg, a thriving northern port of 1.7 million. Yet for the observant among them there is one synagogue, one kindergarten and only one source for all things kosher. His name is Shlomo Almagor, and he’s a hard man to find. He doesn’t list his…
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…
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…
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…
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…
