The melodic strains of the Muslim call for prayer reverberate off the walls of the odd-shaped room as a handful of men and women gather side by side in a row up front. Eventually, the small assembly of faithful bend and bow in the familiarly graceful motions that constitute the Muslim prayer. But this is…
A recent cartoon published in the Philadelphia Inquirer criticizing Israel’s security fence is creating a tempest among Philadelphia’s Jewish community and major Jewish organizations. Tony Auth, a Pulitzer Prize winner and staff editorial cartoonist for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1971, illustrated a cartoon depicting Arabs cordoned into jail-like sections of a Jewish star. A number…
The newly expanded European Union will stretch from the Atlantic to the Aegean, from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. Europeans will have 23 official languages in which to discuss how to spend their common currency. Borders have been knocked down, and cooperation has increased. The E.U., however, has not been a partnership for all its…
The president of a Chicago area bank stepped down last week after a furor erupted over his comments praising Hitler’s economic policies. In a 1,500-word article in the July issue of Outlook, the online newsletter of the Glenview State Bank, which serves thousands of customers in the north and northwest suburbs of Chicago, President David…
JERUSALEM — Despite the shaky cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel’s streets are stained with blood this summer, due to an explosion of gang warfare that has police baffled. One of Israel’s most feared mobsters, Yisrael “Alice” Mizrahi, 58, was killed last week when his Mercedes jeep was blown up near his south Tel…
Last Century of a Sephardic Community: The Jews of Monastir, 1839-1943 By Mark Cohen Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, 432 pages, $34.95. * * *| Last month, I saw a Jewish homeless man near my apartment. He was wearing a yarmulke and muttering Hebrew words, and I think I saw a…
JERUSALEM — Israel’s summer of calm was on the verge of collapsing into new warfare this week, after a pair of deadly Palestinian terrorist attacks left tempers near the boiling point. The back-to-back suicide bombings, the worst spate of terrorism since the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire began six weeks ago, left two Israelis dead and several more…
Of the friends I have made in my Balkan travels, there is nobody alive who is dearer to me, in certain respects, than professor Muhamed Nezirovic´ of the University of Sarajevo. Born in Sarajevo in 1934, in the mixed Muslim and Serb mahala, or neighborhood, of Nadmlini, Hamo — as he is universally known —…
With a Peel: Skip the sugar. Skip the ice. The opinions posted on Bitterlemons.org may be hard to swallow, but like its namesake fruit, the self-described “Palestinian-Israeli Crossfire” yields a healthy squeeze of unfiltered, juicy commentary. The Web site — published in Hebrew, English and Arabic — is produced and edited by Yossi Alpher, a…
The grim tale of the Boston Red Sox’s trade of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees and Boston’s subsequent 80-plus-year World Series drought has been told so many times as to become almost apocryphal. Indeed, the Curse of the Bambino has come to define the Red Sox nation — we are perennial also-rans and…
WASHINGTON — Seeking to prevent the unraveling of its so-called “road map” to Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Bush administration is scaling back its demands on each side in hopes of making it easier for each of them to comply. The apparent aim is to ease domestic political pressures on the leaders, as well as to defuse…
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