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Beyond Mexicanidad: The Other Roots of Frida Kahlo’s Identity
In 1932, Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera were dining with other guests at the Detroit home of Henry Ford, the automotive titan and noted antisemite. (The city had commissioned Rivera to paint a series of murals devoted to the theme of modern industry.) During a lull in conversation, with a characteristic mixture of…
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Weaving the Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy Into its Rightful Place
Triangle: The Fire That Changed America By David Von Drehle Atlantic Monthly Press, 340 pages, $26. * * *| March 25, 1911, became a Sabbath like no other. Scores of young immigrant Jewish women who couldn’t afford a day of rest went to work at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a newfangled high-rise factory on the…
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METROPOLITAN NEW YORK
High Holy Days CyberServices: The High Holy Day services of Temple Emanu-El of the City of New York, a Reform congregation, are to be broadcast on the radio (WQXR-FM or 96.3 FM) as well as the Internet (www.emanuelnyc.org) for those who cannot attend services in person. Rosh Hashana Sept. 26, 5:30 p.m., Yom Kippur, Oct….
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Vatican Distances Itself From Praise Of Gibson’s Movie
The Vatican is distancing itself from the comments of two Catholic officials who recently praised the controversial Mel Gibson movie “The Passion.” In a letter sent to the Anti-Defamation League, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the top Vatican liaison to the Jewish community, said that any endorsements of the film from top church leaders represented “purely personal”…
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Upping Yor Ante
This being the week of Rosh Hashana, I took advantage of the occasion to ask the Israeli scholar Shmuel Gelbart, an expert on Jewish custom and Yiddish usage, a question that has been bothering me. Why is Yiddish the only language in the world whose speakers make a practice of wishing each other a good…
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STORIES OF SURVIVAL AMONG THE SHADOWS
David Tennenbaum survived the Holocaust by pretending to be a Christian, mentally disabled girl. His family’s non-Jewish friend issued false identity papers for him and found him and his mother a secure hiding place in the Polish town of Zimna Woda. The family’s friends recommended that he pose as a mentally disabled girl so that…
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Peres Birthday Bash a Blast From the Oslo Past
JERUSALEM — Celebrating his 80th birthday this week, Shimon Peres enjoyed what was in many ways his finest hour. His two-day birthday party was, by Israeli standards, a feast fit for a caesar. Never before in the history of the country — and probably never again — had so many foreign leaders and dignitaries traveled…
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Israeli Critics Comment –– Problematically –– on American Jewish Fiction
Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature Edited by Michael P. Kramer and Hana Wirth-Nesher Cambridge University Press, 316 pages, $22. * * *| In most respects the new “Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature” lives up to its illustrious predecessors. Essays on Yiddish and Hebrew literature in America and on the “renaissance” of the 1950s…
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AJCongress Opens Talks With Group Of Islamists
The American Jewish Congress has opened an initial discussion with a Muslim group associated with the main Islamist party in Pakistan and is considering deeper contacts. The dialogue, involving the Jewish group and the Islamic Circle of North America, has been approved by Jewish, Israeli and American officials, according to AJCongress sources. The Muslim group…
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Previews From the Pulpits of America
When Rabbi Laura Geller sat down this month to write her High Holy Day sermons, she found a lot to feel gloomy about: a sour economy, a controversial war in Iraq, an enduring battle against terrorism and an increasingly hopeless situation in Israel. “It’s such a hard year because there is so much darkness in…
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Wesley Clark Jumps in With Kosher-Style Kickoff
It was only in his 20s that Wesley Clark, the retired general and Iraq war critic, discovered his Jewish ancestry. But the newest entry in the Democratic presidential race has wasted no time in bringing his fledgling campaign to Jewish precincts — and by this week he seemed poised to inherit some Jewish voters uncomfortable…
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