“The Nutcracker” may be a traditional Christmas favorite, but that has not stopped the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra from adapting it for Chanukah use. The Boston-based group has been performing its own klezmer interpretations of the classic Tchaikovsky ballet ever since it released its “Klezmer Nutcracker” CD in 1998. “Many of the great composers of that…
Julie Sandorf and her husband Michael Weinberger gave little thought to Jewish rituals or observance as they raised their young daughter. Then one day, when she was 3 years old, their daughter came home from church nursery school and announced that she wanted to be “a Christian, not a Jewish.” If Sandorf’s ethnic anxiety upon…
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — The battle to secure kosher meals for an observant Jew serving a life sentence in a Florida prison has been won, but activists say the war is not over. It is still being waged in Florida and a handful of other states that refuse to offer kosher food to inmates. The Florida…
Guardian Angel: According to the Eurobarometer of public opinion recently released by the European Union, six out of every 10 Britons believe Israel to be a threat to world peace. Julie Burchill is not one of them. The contrarian columnist for the Guardian, the newspaper of choice for Britain’s intelligentsia, is moving on at the…
Last week, A.B. Yehoshua sat down with the Forward to discuss “The Liberated Bride,” his ambitious new novel weaving together influences such as William Faulkner and S. Y. Agnon along with “One Thousand and One Nights” and “The Dybbuk.” A soft-spoken yet passionate speaker, with a shock of gray hair and lively, deep-set eyes, the…
Argentine Judge Dropped An Argentine court has dismissed the judge in charge of the investigation of the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. A court in charge of overseeing magistrates decided to take the case out of the hands of investigative judge Juan Jose Galeano and give it to another magistrate,…
The Liberated Bride By A.B. Yehoshua Harcourt, 568 pages, $27. * * *| From the beginning of his career, the Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua has examined the complex relationship between Israeli Jews and Arabs, most notably in his 1964 novella, “Facing the Forests,” and his early novel, “The Lover,” set in Israel after the l973…
The decision of two Democratic presidential candidates, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and former Vermont governor Howard Dean, to forego federal funding in their campaigns must come as a shocker to many Democrats. Federal funding of presidential campaigns was supposed to be a way to liberate candidates from the need to obligate themselves to the…
From Zelde Krulewitz comes a letter asking about the Yiddish expression folg mir a gang. “I would dearly love to know,” she writes, “not only the literal translation of this phrase but its meaning and correct usage — i.e., under what circumstances one would say such a thing.” A literal translation of folg mir a…
Representatives for seven of the nine Democratic presidential candidates squared off this week on issues of importance to the Jewish community, ranging from health care and abortion to Israel and the war on terrorism. The “Democratic Presidential Insider Roundtable,” sponsored by the New York chapter of the National Jewish Democratic Council, was held on Tuesday…
Every death before mine Absorbed, builds the bone Of a skeleton, my own, Flesh shall not confine Long enough to suit me — I wish I had the time Of a redwood tree — Samuel Menashe ——— Born in New York in 1925, Samuel Menashe enlisted in the Army in 1943 and fought in the…
