There are many stand-up comics, but how many wear their jokes on their sleeves? One funnyman from New York — a city not shy on stand-up — who does is Steven Bender, 24, the owner and creator of Off the Desk T-shirts, which boast pithy ripostes to contemporary culture such as “Hebrew School Dropout” and…
Despite mounting criticism of the administration’s Iraq policy, Vice President Dick Cheney appears to be ratcheting up his commitment to the circle of neoconservative intellectuals who helped spearhead President Bush’s war policy, adding one of its most controversial proponents to his national security staff in a little-noticed move last month. David Wurmser, a neoconservative scholar…
The Zionist Organization of America, an organization known for its aggressive tactics and harsh criticisms of the White House, has dismissed its top Washington lobbyist, Sarah Stern. Stern told the Forward that she and ZOA president Morton Klein had repeatedly clashed over his intense criticism of the Bush administration. But, she added, the differences came…
Al Grand, whose masterful translations of Gilbert and Sullivan’s works returns to Der Vinkl once more with a few of his laugh-provoking translations from his “Yam Gazlonim” (“Pirates of Penzance”). What follows is his submission to our readers, along with an announcement about a forthcoming Folksbiene Yiddish Theater’s “Di Yam Gazlonim.” In Gilbert and Sullivan’s…
Washington — Emboldened by the passage of a ban on so-called “partial birth” abortions last week, Republican conservatives in Congress now plan to push several other bills aimed at limiting abortions on a national level. Congressional staffers confirmed this week that Congress is planning to restart the legislative process in the near future on three…
Jewish researchers frustrated with the trouble-plagued National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01 are calling for a question on religion to be added to the decennial United States Census. Bucking the Jewish community’s historic opposition to government inquiries on religion, three leading scholars now say it may be the only way to count Jews accurately. The reform…
Up and down the streets of London’s most Orthodox neighborhoods, Rafi Fuchs drives a van that has kids giving chase, yarmulkes flapping in the wind. Europe’s first kosher ice-cream truck sells only one flavor: vanilla. But that was good enough to sell some 3,000 cones on hot afternoons in Golders Green this summer, when the…
JERUSALEM — With fears growing that Israeli-Palestinian relations are reaching a dangerous stalemate, a power struggle has erupted within the Israeli security establishment over the conduct of Israel’s war against terrorism. Israel’s military brass is pressing for an easing of some recent restrictions on the Palestinian population, arguing that the restrictions on movement and economic…
Ancient Jewish Novels: An Anthology Edited and Translated by Lawrence M. Wills Oxford University Press, 320 pages, $24.95. * * *| In “Joseph and Aseneth,” a “purer than thou” Joseph, the biblical patriarch and newly appointed regent of Egypt, meets the “holier than thou” Aseneth, virginal daughter of Pharaoh’s chief counselor. Aseneth — “more beautiful…
When God decides to destroy His creation — the inhabitants of this earth and all the flora and fauna except for Noah, his family and the very precise passenger list God gives Noah — it is very early on in Genesis. Of course, He is going to try again to make a better world. This…
In a rare rebuke, a top American Jewish organizational official is criticizing the Israeli minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, for penning a scathing critique of American Jewish campus activism. Avraham Infeld, interim president of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, said that Sharansky’s portrayal of the state of…
