Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905-1914 By Mikhail Krutikov Stanford University Press, 248 pages, $55. * * *| Yiddish and the Left: Papers of the Third Mendel Friedman International Conference on Yiddish Edited by Mikhail Krutikov and Gennady Estraikh Legenda, 330 pages, $49.50. * * *| In a small ceremony held in 1901…
BERLIN — Barely two generations after the Holocaust, Germany may be edging Israel aside as the world’s most sought-after refuge for Jews fleeing persecution. That, at least, is the impression created by figures released this month showing that Germany had outpaced Israel last year for the first time ever as the main destination of Jewish…
Merle Spiegel writes: I have been wondering about the custom in traditional Jewish homes of having dairy dinners or suppers on Mondays and Thursdays. Other things have to do with Mondays and Thursdays too, such as the weekly reading of the Torah in the synagogue on those days, the Yiddish phrase yeder montik un donershtik…
WASHINGTON — On the eve of back-to-back White House visits by the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers, and with pressure mounting for Israeli gestures to strengthen the Palestinian leader, Washington lobbyists for Israel were keeping an uncharacteristically low profile this week. With a handful of exceptions on the right and left, lobbyists for Israel were…
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak recently summed up a three-day-long seminar devoted to the July 2000 Camp David summit with this succinct verdict: “Yasser Arafat refused — and all the rest is gossip.” Most Israelis would agree with Barak’s binary, black-or-white assessment of that ill-fated trilateral summit that led, in short order, to the…
WASHINGTON — The Zionist Organization of America is blasting the State Department for naming what it called “hostile critics of Israel” to the new Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World. The panel was assembled at the request of Congress to study the efficacy of the State Department’s public outreach to…
The Body of Brooklyn By David Lazar University of Iowa Press, 163 pages, $24.95. * * *| If you thought Philip Roth’s Portnoys were emotionally claustrophobic, essayist David Lazar’s real-life family almost has them beat. Not only did his mother seem to know when he was masturbating, as if she had some kind of sexual…
CHICAGO — Covering the Arab-American community here in the Windy City is not easy. People hide from reporters. They don’t want their names to appear in print. They seem irrationally mistrustful and refuse to speak on the record for any number of reasons: one “because I have a sister in Ramallah,” another because he didn’t…
Think 1980s. Think “Miami Vice” pastels. Think disco and bad 1970s hair. Think age 13. For those who delight in the simchas of yesteryear, there’s Barmitzvahdisco.com, a Web site dedicated to the bar mitzvah — in all its glitz and glory. Sometimes, some people just want to luxuriate in the sentimental kitschiness of “when we…
Michel Friedman may not be a household name in the shuls and temples of America. But this talk-show host extraordinaire, who until this month doubled as vice president of the Council of Jews in Germany and head of the European Jewish Congress, has lately been making headlines on both sides of the Atlantic — and…
WASHINGTON — A new poll is showing a dramatic drop in Arab-American support for President Bush. The poll, conducted by Zogby International, found that if presidential elections were held today, Bush would win only one-third of the overall Arab vote and a mere 10% of the vote among Arab Muslims. Pollster John Zogby, who conducted…
חוה אַלבערשטיין האָט לעצטנס אַרויסגעלאָזט איר אויטאָביאָגראַפֿיע, וווּ זי באַשרײַבט די ראָלע פֿון ייִדיש אין איר רעפּערטואַר און אין איר לעבן
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