When I was an adolescent in the town of Zichron Ya’akov, Israel, during the 1980s, American fashion magazines were an expensive treat whose glossy pages, fragrant with perfume samples, held the promise of a temporary escape to a more glamorous world. Israeli women’s magazines cost a fraction of the price. But as far as I…
OAKLAND, Calif. — The parade rolled into downtown Oakland last Saturday just as it does every year, a long, undulating chain of youth groups and dance troupes, drill teams and color guards — and, of course, the cowboys. Some ride solo, others in posses, their horses clip-clopping past office buildings. They smiled as they tipped…
Warren Lehrer was struggling with a book of short stories called “Leap” during the spring of 1999. They were about people whose lives were about to undergo tremendous change. At the time he was assisting his wife, Judith Sloan, in a storytelling workshop at Forest Hills High School for which the students interviewed immigrants living…
UJC Launches Search A search process has begun to find the next president of the United Jewish Communities, widely viewed as the toughest job in American Jewish communal life. While the process is still in its initial stages, speculation is focusing on Robert Aronson to become the next top professional of UJC, the roof body…
Over drinks with a leading Bible scholar and a ketubah designer, the conversation segued seamlessly from little-known female prophets of biblical times to Temple prostitutes and then to whom we would choose to be if we could travel back into antiquity. The Bible professor said a scribe; the ketubah designer said a weaver, and I…
One of America’s most liberal, mainstream Christian denominations is stirring controversy with its support for a congregation in suburban Philadelphia devoted to what it terms “Messianic Judaism.” Congregation Avodat Yisrael, which blends Christian worship with Jewish traditions such as Friday-night services and High Holy Day observance, held its first services on Rosh Hashana with generous…
For Shemini Atzeret Deuteronomy 14:22-16:17; Numbers 29:35-30:1 For Simchat Torah Deuteronomy 33:1-34:12; Genesis 1:1-2:3; Numbers 29:35-36:1 * * *| Some time ago, somewhere in a country that gets very cold, two Learned Men — you can tell they are learned from the way they tug at their beards; you can tell there are two of…
Holiday Howard: Former Vermont governor Howard Dean is visiting a sukkah in the Empire State. The Democratic frontrunner will spend some time October 17 at the sukkah of Lincoln Square Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, mingling with Rabbi Adam Mintz and students. Afterward, he will repair to a room in…
“Leyner Dermonen zikh Lider” (“Readers Recall Songs”) is a recurrent feature in the Yiddish Forward. Yosef Rosenblum, a concentration camp survivor who now lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, recently wrote a column about the following song. He asked readers whether they recalled hearing it; if so, where, and if they knew who the author…
WASHINGTON — Syria has in recent weeks stopped supplying Washington with valuable intelligence, which in the past was helping the United States in fighting Al Qaeda and terrorism in Iraq, congressional, diplomatic and intelligence sources told the Forward. The Syrian reversal appears to have played a major role in the Bush administration’s sympathetic response to…
The “special master” appointed by a federal judge to oversee distribution of the $1.25 billion Swiss bank settlement is recommending that all funds not claimed by owners of Holocaust-era Swiss bank accounts should eventually go to assist indigent Holocaust survivors. The October 2 recommendation by the special master, former New York deputy mayor Judah Gribetz,…
אַנאַ שטערנשיס האָט געזאַמלט הונדערטער בעל־פּהיִקע גבֿית־עדותן פֿון מענער און פֿרױען פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע סאָציאַלע שיכטן.
