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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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Making Judaism New, Minus the New Age
ll those years, I had no idea. I was a High Holy Days-only synagogue attendee growing up. My enormous Reform temple had velvet-covered seats, a lofty choir that, majestically, sang from out of sight and an impressive collection of both Torah scrolls and shofars. Every year, I ate apples and honey on Rosh Hashana for…
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Setting Spoken Truth in Motion
Arnie Zane stood 5 feet, 5 inches tall and had the face of a street-wise corner shopkeeper. But when the Bronx-born Jewish boy danced, he commanded the stage with the precision and power of a boomerang. Together with Bill T. Jones, his partner in life and art, they were the oddest of couples — Arnie…
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Jewish Groups Choose Sides on Vouchers
WASHINGTON — With Congress battling over a bill that would strongly influence the future of the school vouchers debate nationwide, Jewish groups on both sides are jumping into the fray. Orthodox Jewish organizations are rallying behind a measure passed by the House of Representatives last week that would bring vouchers to the District of Columbia….
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