What are we to make of the long descriptions of the High Priest’s ceremonial garments in this week’s portion? The garments include a breastplate, a robe, a fringed tunic, a headdress and a sash and an ephod, or long tunic, and each is described in detail. The robe, for example, is to have embroidered pomegranates…
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is rejecting Jerusalem’s demand for American approval of a plan to strengthen several key blocks of Jewish settlements in exchange for a complete Israeli pullback from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants to fortify large blocks of Jewish settlements in the West…
A delegation of French Catholic bishops toured New York last week for what amounted to a crash course in Judaism. Organized by the World Jewish Congress, the four-day encounter included visits to institutions ranging from Reform to Chasidic. WJC chairman Israel Singer described the tour as an outgrowth of a desire to further the interreligious…
When Massachusetts Senator John Kerry learned last year that his paternal grandparents in 19th-century Austria had converted to Catholicism from Judaism, one of the first people he called was his younger brother, Cameron. The younger Kerry was surprised. In an interview at John Kerry’s New York headquarters last Friday, Cameron Kerry told the Forward that…
For the Jewish immigrants who founded the German-language newspaper Aufbau in 1934, America represented the future and Germany the past. Things certainly have changed. Just days after the Jewish newspaper’s 70th-anniversary issue was published last week, editors said the paper’s financial situation in America had grown so tenuous that it faced the stark choice of…
King Kerry: Jewish voters in the March 2 Super Tuesday primary states cast their ballots for Massachusetts Senator John Kerry in higher percentages than did voters of other religions, according to exit polling data. Their vote, which mirrors earlier primary results, suggests that Jewish Democrats — a high-turnout, activist group that is concentrated in some…
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is drawing harsh condemnations in some circles over its much-anticipated review of “The Passion of the Christ.” Using terms like “outrage” and “betrayal,” several Jewish and Catholic interfaith leaders are saying that in praising Mel Gibson’s film on Jesus’ last 12 hours, the bishops’ conference, the top Roman Catholic…
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has fled his country in a recurrence of the violent disorder that has haunted the history of Haiti over and over again. Superficially, this should not be so. Some 95% of the population is descended from slaves. Haiti, which is smaller than Maryland, has a population of less than 7 million. All…
Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography By Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin Oxford University Press, 354 pages, $27.50. ——– Arafat’s War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest By Efraim Karsh Grove Press, 320 pages, $25. ——– In the course of several meetings during the latter half of the 1990s, I witnessed Yasser Arafat…
Seymour Zimilover and Harry Jaglom have related questions. Mr. Zimilover writes: “We often hear the song ‘Di Mezinke Oysgegebn’ played at weddings where the youngest child of the family is being married. What is a ‘mezinke’ and from what language is the word derived?” And from Mr. Jaglom comes the query: “My father, who was…
Charles Bernstein, a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, is known as a theorist and writer of “language” poetry. Among his 12 collections, the two most recent are “With Strings” (University of Chicago Press, 2001) and “Republics of Reality: 1975-1995” (Sun & Moon Press, 2000). But he’s also an active essayist, editor and…
