The Bush administration, already embattled over its use of doubtful intelligence in building its case for the war against Iraq, is gearing up for renewed scrutiny over reports that it has hampered investigations of the September 11 attacks. A congressional report on the attacks is set to be released in the middle of next week,…
Growing up in “Jewish New York” in the 1950s and 1960s, I didn’t think too much about the fact that Betty Boop was a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, out for a little fun. The wonderful conceit of the Jewish Museum’s “Entertaining America” is that the viewer obligingly slips into the pew of the secular…
OAKLAND, Calif. — California’s ongoing budget crisis has Jewish federations and their social service agencies bracing for deep cuts that may leave some of their most vulnerable clients in dire straits. Topping administrators’ fears are proposed cuts in their already deficient reimbursements from Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid healthcare program for the poor. That would force…
To coincide with the 50th anniversary last month of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, their younger son, Robert Meeropol, released his new memoir, “An Execution in the Family” (St. Martin’s Press, 2003). Coincidentally, the same season saw the Lincoln Center debut of “A Bad Friend,” a play by cartoonist and playwright Jules Feiffer…
Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter is getting the political squeeze from both the left and right over his support of President Bush’s anti-abortion judicial nominees. The jam has Democrats predicting that Specter will lose the Jewish vote and fail in his bid for a fifth term. The nation’s senior Jewish lawmaker and a senior member of…
The Decalogue, or Ten Commandments — so a federal court has decided, citing the Constitution’s separation of church and state — must be removed from the rotunda of the Alabama State Judicial Building in Montgomery, together with the granite monument on which they were carved. Or is it the Eleven Commandments? Anyone counting the number…
LOS ANGELES — Judging from his work on several gruesome Quentin Tarantino films, Hollywood producer Lawrence Bender seems like an obvious candidate to brave the intifada and visit Israel. But Bender’s trip there last month marked the first time that the “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” producer had ever been to the Jewish state. “I’m…
Is there anything more American than the long automobile trip en famille? For some families, like that of writer Calvin Trillin, who grew up in Kansas City, Mo., during the 1930s and ’40s, taking to the road, especially in the years following the war, was a kind of annual contest, pitting endurance against distance. Writing…
Slumping in his chair, debut film director Eitan Gorlin oozes California cool. His hair, almost blond, flops into a bowl cut; his corduroys, white but slightly dirty, are rolled above his ankles, and his lone accessory, an unadorned silver ring, sits oh-so-defiantly on his thumb. If Gorlin comes across as cool, however, his new film…
What will historians in the future call the nearly three years of daily violence between Palestinians and Israelis that have — for the moment — just ended? That may depend on whether or not the cease-fire that has been declared becomes permanent. If it does, a strong contender is a name that did not exist…
Chaim Engel, who took part in one of the most successful escapes from a Nazi concentration camp, died of heart failure on July 4, following a stroke and pneumonia. He was 87. Engel lived a life as dramatic as any book or action film — and his story became material for both. The son of…
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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