The main processing agency for Holocaust-era reparations payments voted this week to continue its policy of allocating some restitution money toward Holocaust education, turning down calls to divert all the funds toward needy survivors. The 57-member board of directors of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany voted unanimously Tuesday to continue spending 20%…
I came of age at just the right time to enjoy Celia Cruz — the greatest female singer salsa has ever produced — in her prime, and for her to help shape my lifelong musical tastes. Without her knowing it, she once helped get me out of a frightening situation in a drug-saturated Peruvian river…
A little-known coalition of museums is poised to get a big boost this week, with an unprecedented international conference and an unexpected appearance by star architect Daniel Libeskind. Since its founding four years ago, the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience has received little attention. This week, however, the coalition’s public profile could…
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Mayor Richard Bloom calls his city “a working paradise” — a beachside Los Angeles suburb and governable mix of capitalist and anti-capitalist values where followers of both Irving Thalberg and Irving Howe live in some proximity to each other and all receive a fair hearing. With its millionaire homeowners, senior citizens,…
This Sabbath we announce the coming of Av, the month about which the Mishna teaches: “When Av begins, diminish joy.” Given the sorry litany of events that befell the Jewish people during this month, it’s no wonder that the Mishna counsels against rejoicing. The Mishna lists five tragic events that took place on the 9th…
Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years, Volume 1: Made for America, 1890-1901 Edited by Candace Falk University of California Press, 655 pages, $60. * * *| ‘I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful radiant things.” That is what anarchism meant to Emma Goldman, the Jewish immigrant from Russia…
WASHINGTON — President Bush’s pick for a federal appeals judgeship in Atlanta is drawing strong opposition from Jewish groups, including three organizations that usually refuse to take sides in judicial fights. Officials at the Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith International and American Jewish Congress said that they felt obligated to abandon their typical silence on judicial…
Once again, Der Vinkl is pleased to offer our readers still another tasty dish of family humor drawn from the Yiddish Forverts under the title of khendelekh. The editor of the feature is Rukhl Shaechter, who seems to have an inexhaustible reservoir of such amusing tiny tales. The transliteration is by Goldie Gold, the English…
JERUSALEM — In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to stand up. In 2003, Vicki Knafo refused to lie down. It’s too early to say whether Knafo, the single mother from the Negev town of Mitzpe Ramon who marched to Jerusalem this month to protest the government’s austerity budget, will have the same impact as Parks. Parks’s…
Fierce Words: President Bush lied in making the case for the war in Iraq, and in at least one respect the situation there resembles Vietnam, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry suggested to reporters Monday. The Democratic presidential candidate, who spoke to the press in a conference call, said the president has “a clear credibility gap with…
Rabbi Bob Alper and Nazareth, a Christian Arab-American, join forces for a night of stand-up in “Comedy for Peace!” The performance is preceded by a 30-minute auction benefiting Seeds of Peace, a nonprofit, nonpolitical organization that brings together young Israelis and Arabs in a summer camp in the hopes of fostering peace in the Middle…
דער זומער איז אַן עקשן, ער וויל ניט, וויל ניט קומען, הגם אויף בייטן וואַקסן צעקווייטיקט שוין די בלומען.
