TORONTO — Canada’s largest city is witnessing the end of a political era: Mayor Mel Lastman, a Jewish millionaire businessman who has spent the past 30 years as an unbeatable municipal official in the Toronto area, will be missing from the ballot in November. Lastman, 70, is ailing from hepatitis C treatments and will not…
The Israeli judicial commission charged with investigating the death of 12 Israeli Arabs during riots in 2000 has released a final report slamming police and the government and calling for steps to establish “real equality” between Jewish and Arab citizens. Headed by Supreme Court Justice Theodor Or, the three-member commission rebuked top Israeli political leaders…
Zackary Sholem Berger is without a doubt a man of many hats. On September 14, he will don his silliest one — a towering red-and-white-striped hat — as he meanders up and down 13th Avenue near Eichler’s Judaica in Boro Park, Brooklyn, selling and signing copies of his new book, a Yiddish version of “The…
JERUSALEM — Austria would welcome a new Israeli request for assistance in investigating a suspicious loan to the sons of Prime Minister Sharon, according to senior sources in the Austrian Justice Ministry. A Vienna court turned down Israel’s initial request in July. The sources said Austria would have approved the Israeli request to investigate Austrian…
Jack Eisner, a Holocaust survivor who made tens of millions of dollars and then told the world about his wartime experiences, died August 24 at 77. Eisner, who made his money in the import-export business, helped found several Holocaust remembrance organizations and wrote an autobiography, “The Survivor,” which was made into a play and a…
‘Klezmer dancing? It’s not really a sitting and listening kind of music; it’s a moving kind of music,” said Amy Zakar, one of the young fiddlers at the eighth annual KlezKanada Festival of Yiddish/Jewish Music and Culture, held August 19 through August 25 at Camp B’nai Brith, in the woods north of Montreal. “I just…
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration’s Middle East diplomacy, shattered by the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire and sideswiped by the president’s own troubles, has been reduced in recent days to jawboning a peace agreement between the feuding leaders of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen. Administration…
Sanford Solender, former executive vice president of the UJA-Federation of New York, died Saturday at age 89. Solender, the father of Stephen Solender, the former president of the United Jewish Communities federation umbrella group, headed the New York federation from 1970 to 1981. From 1948 to 1970 he was an executive with the National Jewish…
All our Jewish lives, we have been told that when a close relative — parent, sibling, spouse, child — dies, we are to come to the synagogue to recite Kaddish. Kaddish is not a prayer about death, but a doxology, a prayer of praise to God. So, even in our grief, we are to stand…
Arab groups are threatening to quit the country’s largest anti-war coalition unless it does more to support the Palestinian cause, but Jewish members say that such a move would lead them to break ranks. Several Arab and Muslim groups announced last week that they would drop out of United for Peace and Justice, a leading…
WASHINGTON — A top Middle East scholar is suspending his ties with the United States Institute of Peace to protest the recent appointment of Daniel Pipes to the board of the federally funded think tank, sparking fears of a wider boycott. Former presidential adviser William Quandt told the Forward that he is suspending work on…
