I was browsing the other day in the letters-to-the-editor section of an old issue of a magazine called First Things, an intellectual monthly edited by Richard John Neuhaus, a leading Catholic thinker and strong supporter of Israel. Taking Neuhaus to task for this support was a letter that commented on “the tragedy of a displaced…
In an unprecedented public discussion last week, Jewish organizational leaders and counter-terrorism experts declared that the American Jewish community has not prepared adequately to protect itself from terrorist attacks. Among those voicing concern at the January 8 briefing, which drew 65 participants from 35 organizations, were Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of…
Report from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France, 1925-1939 By Joseph Roth, translated with introduction by Michael Hofmann WW Norton & Company, 224 pages, $24.95. * * *| From 1919 to 1939, Europe dwelt in the eye of a storm. Nothing was normal. The sky was yellow, the air still but menacing. Whole countries lay…
Despite pressure from various sources, the Republican National Committee and allied organizations are declining to speak out against two conservatives, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and New York Post columnist Ralph Peters, who compared opponents of the Bush administration to Nazis. The RNC led the charge last month against the liberal Web site MoveOn.org for allowing…
Last month, Sara Mishra celebrated her bat mitzvah with a little laining and a little lamb. Mishra, 13, read from the Torah at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, a Reconstructionist synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, before she and her family and friends piled onto school buses and drove to Utsav, an Indian…
MIAMI, Fla. — The erection of a neo-Nazi billboard near Orlando has triggered a showdown between a local business owner and a group of self-described Jewish militants. At issue is a billboard on Florida’s Turnpike, which sports the phrase “WHO RULE$ AMERIKA?” and contact information for the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group that the Anti-Defamation…
To quote a seminal thinker of my youth, Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it.” Right now it’s all a blur. My little blob of baby protoplasm is suddenly having elaborate tea parties with her stuffed animals, dancing a toddler version…
The December 19 East Village Mamele column “Alice’s Adventures: An Iconoclast Shares Her Story” misidentified the journalist B.Z. Goldberg as a writer for the Yiddish Forward. Due to an editing error, the January 9 article “Knish Nosh” did not have a byline. The column was written by the Forward’s Food Maven, Matthew Goodman.
(To the tune of “Give It Back to the Indians” by Rodgers and Hart) Looked for doctors, looked for lawyers Eligible countrymen All-American Tom Sawyers But I’m stuck on an Indian. Moral, wise and steady ego Gorgeous eyes and olive skin What is your advice, amigo — Should I go with my Indian? He’s got…
Arabs Debate Reform Islamists and nationalist opposition leaders in Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are trying to block government educational reforms directed mainly at revamping textbooks. Challenges to educational reform are particularly overt in Jordan, where the political system and media are more open and government critics more outspoken than in the Gulf. “Nationalists and…
Eric Breindel, the late chief editorial writer for the New York Post, was honored with the first American Jewish Historical Society Kenneth J. Bialkin Citigroup Public Service Award at a December 17 “In Memoriam (1955-1998)” tribute at the Center for Jewish History. It was established “in recognition of [AJHS chairman] Bialkin’s 16 years as a…
