In a bid to get Iran to halt its nuclear programs, the Bush administration is planning to expose the regime’s hidden nuclear activities in the run-up to a key meeting in June of the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to people close to the issue. Two sources said that the United States and Israel have…
This is the third in a series of special sections celebrating the 350th anniversary of the arrival of Jews in the United States. When 23 Jews arrived on these shores from Recife, Brazil in 1654, Governor Peter Stuyvesant immediately wrote to his Dutch West India Company bosses requesting permission to ship back to their point…
TEL AVIV — While Israel and the world community try to guess just what Prime Minister Sharon means when he speaks of his “disengagement plan,” Sharon himself has begun lashing out at the plan’s critics, choosing as his first target an unlikely — and quite unsuspecting — opponent: Israel’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen….
When Tanya Benzaquen began sketching hats in the margins of her middle-school notebooks — form-fitting hats with sequin starbursts and wide-brimmed hats with floral accents — she knew she was onto something. Fifteen years later, Benzaquen, now in her late 20s, is an award-winning hat-maker. Her designs appeal to two very different sets: Orthodox women…
More than a century after the founders of Reform Judaism rejected kosher dietary laws as outdated practices likely to “obstruct” modern spiritual development, a growing cadre of the movement’s religious leaders are seeking to revive the practice. Discussion about resurrecting the observance of kosher laws, or kashrut, dominated the latest edition of the quarterly journal…
To say mameles get mixed messages about parenting is an understatement. Media portraits of moms are totally contradictory: Stay-at-home moms (or SAHMs, in perky parenting-message-board nomenclature) are sometimes depicted as noble and fulfilled, sometimes painted as depressed, judgmental cupcake-bakers with brains that are rotting like overripe melons. Working moms are sometimes caricatured as viper-ish executive…
Mel Gibson isn’t the only director generating a heated debate over his depiction of Jews. As “The Passion of the Christ” racked up more than $200 million at movie theaters in just two weeks and generated loads of media attention, a burgeoning debate has emerged over the latest Broadway incarnation of “Fiddler on the Roof,”…
Many a child has refused to eat spaghetti on the grounds that it looked “just like worms.” (There’s even an old joke in which a baby bird refuses to eat his worms because to him they look like spaghetti.) Appearances aside, there is actually a closer relationship between the two — at least etymologically —…
TEL AVIV — The simmering debate over Israel’s January 29 hostage exchange deal with Hezbollah erupted into a full-scale political crisis this week, following news reports that Prime Minister Sharon had a personal relationship with the father-in-law of the sole Israeli brought home alive in the deal, reserve colonel and suspected drug dealer Elhanan Tennenbaum….
There’s a passage in the Shaarei Zedek, a 14th-century mystical tract, in which the anonymous author recounts a literal ecstasy, an exiting of the soul from the body. What is inside becomes outside, and through the medium of language, the process of the world’s unfolding is re-envisioned beautifully as God looking in the mirror. The…
With the Democratic primaries all but over and Ralph Nader pledging to run for the White House, only one piece of the November electoral lineup remains unsettled: Will President Bush face an independent challenge from his right? Speculation is rampant on the Web and among dissatisfied conservatives that Roy Moore — who grabbed national headlines…
