Nate Levine may have cracked the JCC code. About a quarter-century ago, when Levine was a recent college graduate handing out gym towels at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, he overheard people talking about the JCC’s need for a new, modern facility. Private fitness clubs, with their seemingly inexhaustible budgets for equipment and…
• In the special literature section: New works by Gennadi Estraikh and Boris Carlow, and a “found manuscript” from the poet Misha Mogulevitsh. • In the “World of Yiddish”: A new Israeli film on Yiddish receives praise from professor Yitskhok Niborski, a rare appearance in New York by the Israeli Yiddish actor Yankev Bodo, and…
A leading critic of Mel Gibson’s controversial film about the death of Jesus has resigned from his post at the Anti-Defamation League. Eugene Korn, the ADL’s director of interfaith affairs, told the Forward that his resignation last week represented a “mutual decision” resulting from his need for “a more reflective and contemplative environment.” Korn’s departure…
JERUSALEM — Israelis often suppose that their long history of warfare, capped by three years of bloody intifada, have all but immunized them against life’s more mundane fears and anxieties. But nothing could have prepared them for the sheer terror raised this week by the specter of tainted baby food. That terror swept the Jewish…
The popular American humorist Garrison Keillor once said, “I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.” It’s a clever line but, if practiced, a prescription for failure. If we don’t like the existing reality, then we need to do something about it. For those of us committed to the viability of…
Oskar Schindler was immortalized in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film “Schindler’s List.” Now the German industrialist, who managed to save the lives of more than 1,000 Jews by arranging for them to work under his protection in his factories, is the subject of a touring exhibit curated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Schindler,” which…
Got Jews? As the Democratic presidential contenders gear up for a final push before the primaries, a number of campaigns are designating personnel as liaisons to the Jewish community. The campaigns’ fundraisers have been operating feverishly among Jews from the get-go — Jewish donors supply more than half the funds for any Democratic presidential campaign,…
Fred Weinberg, the Toronto pediatrician, Judaica collector and Yiddishist, died Thursday after a lengthy illness. He was 84. Born in Ostrovtse (Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski), Poland, in 1919, he immigrated to Canada in 1924. As a Jewish community cultural activist, Weinberg was a published writer and noted lecturer in several fields including museology, medical history and Judaic…
Three brief vignettes illustrate the situations I face as a feminist Orthodox Jew who funds Jewish organizations and show why I give the way I do. • A fund-raiser asked me to sponsor a number of Hebrew letters — at $18 per letter — being written by a scribe, into a Torah scroll. I asked…
Lectures and Discussions Yehoshua Speaks: Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua delivers the annual Irving Howe Memorial Lecture, named after the late founding editor of Dissent magazine. The acclaimed literary figure speaks on the topic of “The Root of Anti-Semitism,” with a response from City University of New York historian Elisheva Carlebach. City University of New York…
JERUSALEM — Bobby Brown, a former adviser to former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is slated to be named director of international affairs of the World Jewish Congress as well as its Jerusalem director, the Forward has learned. The appointment is the congress’s third major personnel move in the past month and comes amid a…
