Benjamin Ish-Shalom and Elazar Stern are the quintessential odd couple. Professor Ish-Shalom, dressed formally in a suit and tie with wire-rim glasses, sideburns and slightly disheveled hair, looks every bit the academic. The founder and rector of Beit Morasha of Jerusalem: The Academic Center for Jewish Studies and Leadership, Ish-Shalom speaks with the precision of…
The season for paradox has come when two become one yet remain distinctive when our little enclave overflows with reminiscences and happy wishes and we bask in familiar voices and all is friendliness. The complex self is now suspended for this is a day for a rondo a jig a romp ….whatever, a day for…
Sensible Anti-Zionism: “There is a legitimate ground for taking a moral and sensible stand against Zionism,” firebrand Israeli-Arab politician Azmi Bishara writes in the July 3 issue of the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly. “We can retain our anti-Zionist cultural stand without being enemies of the Jews or to coexistence.” Bishara’s own anti-Zionist cultural stand was put…
The CD cover of “The Best Of Herbie Mann” features a shot of the late jazz flutist, taken some time in the mid-1960s. The very picture of an urban Jewish hepcat, Mann stares out of the photo looking cool and disinterested. Some people might argue the cool part, but no one could ever accuse him…
Tel Aviv ‘Don’ Gives Thanks Ze’ev Rosenstein, reputed “don” of the Tel Aviv underworld, attended a synagogue in Jerusalem on Monday to recite Gomel — the public prayer of thanksgiving for escaping danger — after surviving an apparent assassination attempt. Rosenstein narrowly escaped death last week when a bomb went off outside his office, injuring…
What you've been eating is most likely smoked salmon. "Lox" is much saltier.
WASHINGTON — The nation’s major Jewish organizations are launching a program aimed at shielding federal social programs that cater to the poor, with its first priority to be maintaining Medicaid’s present funding and strict federal supervision over the way states deliver Medicaid services. “This will be our main focus in the next few months,” said…
Marvin Miller threw a curve ball into baseball history — and sports history — shifting the sport’s balance of power irrevocably. He made his entrée back in the days when baseball players were treated as chattel — making four-figure salaries, not eight — and labor unions had no place in sports. By the time he…
Jewish Democrats become apoplectic when they hear Republicans swaggeringly predict a shift in the Jewish vote toward the Republican column. The overwhelming preponderance of polling, Democrats say, supports the opposite view — that Jews, alone among white groups, remain overwhelmingly Democratic. Last month, an independent poll for the Ipsos/Cook Political Report again confirmed the Democrats’…
Secular summer holidays are great. You barbecue and watch fireworks. Jewish summer holidays, however, aren’t quite as much fun. You fast; you pray — bring on the good times. The first of them, the Fast of the 17th of Tammuz, is right around the corner, on July 17. For the three weeks between the 17th…
Presidential Players: The Boston Globe’s seven-part series of articles on the life of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry is so voluminous and detailed that it practically constitutes the screenplay for a multi-part television docudrama, a reporter and two political types decided over beers last week. The drinkers — there was a Kerry supporter among them —…
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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