Conductor Murry Sidlin was browsing through a table of used, tattered books when he discovered a slender book about the Terezin concentration camp that told an unusual musical story. According to the book, Terezin held a disproportionate number of artists and intellectuals. One inmate — Rafael Schachter of Prague — organized a chorus of prisoners….
The night before Rana Abu Frieh left Israel for the first time, the 16-year-old Bedouin cried as some 50 relatives crowded into her small home to offer farewell presents. Frieh was leaving her village of Rahat, south of Beersheba, to attend this summer’s July-August session of Camp Shomria in Liberty, N.Y. “Some of my relatives…
Graham Fuller was misidentified in the August 15 article “Study Urges Investment in Arab Schools.” He is a former consultant to the Rand Corporation.
See, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: the blessing if you hearken to the commandments of the Lord your God… and the curse if you shall not hearken…. — Deuteronomy 11:26 The opening of this week’s portion, Re’eh, establishes the exercise of free will, and the blessings and curses of…
Godfather Knows Best: Pundits and journalists lately have had a field day with the word “neoconservative.” A quick Nexis search reveals that the word pops up in press accounts five times more often than it did just two years ago. Nevertheless, there seems to be little agreement about the term’s meaning or exactly who these…
Take the F train to East Broadway, walk past the old Forward building — now encased in pre-gentrification scaffolding — and across the street is the Mazer Theater, where the musical “A Stoop on Orchard Street” attempts to re-create New York’s Lower East Side immigrant life circa 1910. Inspired by his grandfather’s stories, this ambitious…
Jewish activists mourned the violent death of the United Nations high commissioner for human rights and expressed hope that his successors will pursue his efforts to reach out to Jews and Israel. The high commissioner, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was among at least 18 people killed in Tuesday’s bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad,…
Is it acceptable to offer one’s sympathy about a recent divorce or death in a social setting? I was at a dinner party and ran into a woman whose mother had died and to whom I had never written a note. I felt awkward not acknowledging the death, but I didn’t feel that the setting…
As France endures 100-degree temperatures, Parisian Jewish organizations have struggled to cope as unburied corpses have had to wait up to four days for burial. Reports suggest that as many as 3,000 people have died during France’s August heat wave. Hardest hit were the elderly and those with serious medical conditions. Death rates in Paris…
Stanley Siegelman seems to be as prolific as his timely, topical poems are terrific. Just a few weeks ago, we ran his poem about the White House with a president named Joseph Lieberman. While readers were still giggling, he sent us a second bit of brittle, brilliant humor on Senator Hillary Clinton’s biography. And now,…
With an outbreak of malaria sweeping through Ethiopia, American lawmakers are criticizing Israel for failing to open its doors to 18,000 would-be immigrants from the African nation. Several members of Congress raised the issue during recent meetings with Israeli officials in an attempt to win support for the impoverished Ethiopians, known as Falash Mura. Recognized…
