Choreographer Ohad Naharin spawned a controversy at Israel’s 50th anniversary celebration in 1998. His troupe, Batsheva Dance Company, was to perform “Anaphaza,” which called for the dancers, clad in black suits and fedoras, to strip to their underwear, accompanied by the song from the Haggada, “Who Knows One?” Haim Miller, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem,…
Despite President Bush’s campaign pledge to heal the country’s divisions over Clinton-era controversies, the administration has been doling out top legal posts to former deputies of Kenneth Starr and other conservative lawyers who helped fuel the Clinton impeachment effort. The president is reportedly set to offer a seat on the nation’s second most important court…
In its whirlwind of offerings from July 7 to July 27, the Lincoln Center Festival promises a veritable feast of diverse cultures. Audiences are invited on extraordinary excursions into enchanted realms, including Korean shamanism rituals and vibrant epics known as pansori, and not one, but two Italian operas based on Shakespeare’s Scottish play, “Macbeth.” A…
JERUSALEM — Hardened by the recent experience of broken promises and broken dreams, Israelis are watching the emerging cease-fire announced this week with a mixture of skepticism and hope, praying that it turns out to be more than just a temporary lull, as most suspect, in the three-year-old Palestinian intifada. Israeli decision makers are nearly…
Mordecai: An Early American Family By Emily Bingham Hill and Wang, 346 pages, $26. * * *| History isn’t what it used to be. What was once the exclusive stomping ground of kings, emperors, presidents and warriors has been opened to the public, so to speak. Nowadays, history books are written on just about anything…
Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman is hanging on to his presidential candidacy by the threads of his tzitzit after posting a second-quarter contributions filing that appears to have put him further back in the pack of Democratic contenders. Lieberman brought in “about $5 million and still counting” in the quarter that closed June 30, according to…
OMAHA, Neb. — Aaron Pollak looks back fondly on his childhood on the prairie. He recalls bicycling over Omaha’s rolling hills, walking on the Old Market’s cobblestone streets, playing at the JCC day camp and participating in the Jewish community. But there’s no beach in Omaha, no thriving nightlife. There aren’t any national parks nearby,…
Burberry raincoats, designer biscuits, health insurance and therapy just aren’t enough for some canines. Fidos and Fifis are now bounding — or being dragged? — up the evolutionary ladder. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s leading whom. So why stop at “member of the family” when there’s “member of the tribe”? Enter the “Bark Mitzvah.”…
It may mean bubkes to some, but oy, does it mean a lot to others. This week, a major force in the American dictionary establishment recognized two of the Yiddish language’s most common slang words. Merriam-Webster released the 11th edition of its dictionary on Tuesday, and many readers were delighted to find in it the…
— Looking for lessons For the past six months I have been dating a woman I am seriously considering marrying. She is an accomplished pianist, and I spend many evenings at her house listening to her play while I read. I thought it would be nice if I also learned to play. My girlfriend has…
Separate But Not Equal: “Judaism,” David Gelernter announces in the July-August issue of Commentary, “is the most important intellectual development in human history.” To wit: The Cold War set the Christian and “post-Christian modernist” West against the Marxist East. “The one thing Christianity and Marxism had in common,” he observes, “was that they were both…
הערט אַן אַרטיקל וועגן אַ באַליבטער מעשׂה פֿון אַ באָבע מיט די אייניקלעך און אַ צווייטן אַרטיקל וועגן חסידישע מעשׂיות.
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