God and Candidate I: It was hard not to miss the military symbolism in Senator John Kerry’s formal announcement of his candidacy for the presidency in front of the USS Yorktown at Mount Pleasant, S.C., Tuesday: kind of like being hit over the head with an aircraft carrier. What struck us about the event, though,…
“Technically, Alice, according to the Torah, it’s not adultery.” Alice yanks her elbow from his hand, walks down the synagogue steps, crosses the street to a park bench, sits. Bob follows, but as he sits beside her, Alice angles her body away. “Alice,” he says, touching her shoulder. She jerks free. “Carol’s Jewish,” he says,…
The U.S. Open tennis tournament now has a kosher food cart. Hot dogs, pretzels and knishes are among the items available at the cart run by Jeffrey Striks of Strictly Kosher, who also operates kosher food carts at New York Yankees and Mets baseball games, and at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. Every evening during…
The bombing of the United Nations’ headquarters in Iraq opens up a new chapter in the strained relationship between the United States and the U.N. It began with the charge of the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein was violating a provision under a U.N. agreement that forbade his (Hussein’s) building weapons of mass destruction. The…
Donna Ruff’s site-specific installation “Nephesh” (Hebrew for “breath,” “spiritual” or “inspiration”) at the Eldridge Street Project is meant to embody the body and spirit of the Jewish religion and its people, Ruff told the Forward. This is reflected through five wooden stands. The stands, Ruff said, represent the Torah’s five books, which united the Jewish…
Probably no film in history has been written about as much before its public debut as Mel Gibson’s new movie about the last days of Jesus. Many of the critics and scholars who have seen it screened in advance have accused it of both antisemitism and historical ignorance — an ignorance all the more appalling…
UNITED NATIONS — Despite a growing sense of shared fate in the war against Islamic terrorism, last week’s deadly bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad appears to have sharpened rather than reduced the debate between America and the world body over how to proceed in Iraq. The reason, diplomats here say, is the…
A half-century ago, the name Ruth Rubin was almost synonymous with Jewish folk songs. A singer, recording artist, scholar of Jewish lore, writer and translator, she edited a charming collection titled “Jewish Folk Songs (In Yiddish and English).” In the foreword of Rubin’s book, Moses Asch wrote: “Today [Rubin] ranks as one of the outstanding…
JERUSALEM – Just days after a bus bombing that killed 21 people, downtown Jerusalem was bustling with activity this week. The Chutzot Hayotzer street fair that has taken over the city’s pedestrian mall every evening for the past month continued unaffected. In fact, the crowds were thicker than ever. Two months of relative calm following…
A prominent Egyptian legal scholar is preparing a lawsuit against Jews around the world over gold allegedly stolen in biblical times during the Jewish exodus from Egypt. Nabil Hilmy, dean of the faculty of law at Egypt’s Zagazig University, announced his plan in the Egyptian government weekly, Al-Ahram Al-Arabi, according to the Middle East Media…
It was not easy for President Bush to manipulate matters to get the United States involved in a war in Iraq. But, he did it — although it cost him his credibility with many Americans. But now he faces a tougher task: getting out of Iraq. Officially, the war ended May 1. But now it…
