fascist party, and the other part of his government was the Northern Alliance, which is composed of racists from the north who regard the southerners as degenerate. Does that sound like a good human rights and civil rights record to you?” Even for some people sympathetic to the ADL’s decision, Berlusconi’s past is cause for…
‘Everything revolves around bread and death,” the Yiddish proverb tells us, and this is never truer than on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when we deny ourselves the one that we may not be condemned to the other. On the day during which we are most aware of our mortality we abstain from those…
A recently released review by leading survey researchers has pointed to holes in the methodology of the National Jewish Population Survey 2000-2001 that could have led to an undercount of the Jewish population. The review comes as emotions over the controversial population survey conducted by United Jewish Communities are reaching a fever pitch, with much…
This is the time of year when I ask forgiveness of my family and friends for anything I might have done in the past that was hurtful to them and when I focus on forgiving others for hurts they have inflicted on me. A few months ago I had a falling out with a friend,…
Hello, Goodbye: Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman is welcoming retired general Wesley Clark into the Democratic presidential race even as he is insisting that in at least one way, former Vermont governor Howard Dean is outside the Democratic Party. During a conference call September 19 with reporters from Jewish publications, a relaxed-sounding Lieberman had kind words…
First Day of Rosh Hashana: Genesis 21:1–34; Numbers 29:1–6; Second Day: Genesis 22:1–24, Numbers 29:1–6. * * *| ‘Pray take your son, your only-one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the land of Moriah, and bring him up there as a sacrifice…” (Genesis 22:2). This bone-chilling scene opener might seem more apt in…
Simcha Dinitz, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and past chairman of the Jewish Agency, has died. Dinitz, 74, died Tuesday of a heart attack in Jerusalem. Born in Tel Aviv, Dinitz joined the Haganah in pre-state Palestine and served in the Israel Defense Forces during the War of Independence. He spent 37…
Abe Greenhouse did not, at first, admit to throwing a pie at Israeli Minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Natan Sharansky. “But I will admit to shouting, ‘Am Yisrael Pie!’” Greenhouse told the Forward. Sharansky, an activist for Soviet Jewry’s right to immigrate to Israel who spent nine years languishing in Soviet prisons before he…
King of Odessa: A Novel By Robert A. Rosenstone Northwestern University Press, 256 pages, $24.95. * * *| The great Soviet writer Isaac Babel is renowned less for his work than for his status as a symbol of the brutality of the Communist regime. Justly famed for his short story collection, “Red Cavalry,” and his…
Wearing his New York City Fire Department chaplain’s uniform, Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, president of the New York Board or Rabbis, delivered the invocation at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York “Rebuilders of New York” September 9 dinner. JCRC officer and dinner co-chair Sally Goodgold offered the ha’motzi. Among the 300 guests at the…
American Synagogues: A Century of Architecture and Jewish Community By Samuel Gruber Photography by Paul Rocheleau Edited by Scott J. Tilden Rizzoli International Publications, 240 pages, $50. * * *| For Rachel Wischnitzer’s 1955 book “Synagogue Architecture in the United States: History and Interpretation,” the first and last great survey of the subject, architect Philip…
אַנאַ שטערנשיס האָט געזאַמלט הונדערטער בעל־פּהיִקע גבֿית־עדותן פֿון מענער און פֿרױען פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע סאָציאַלע שיכטן.
