JERUSALEM — Thousands of impoverished Ethiopians fighting for the right to enter Israel have received new support from top rabbis across the religious spectrum. In separate letters to Israeli officials, the head of Reform Judaism in America, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, and Israel’s newly elected Sephardic chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, urged action to resolve the problem…
The sleep-away camp where we send our sons offers optional Friday-night Sabbath services. The camp director has asked me to let him know in advance if I would like my sons to attend. If I say yes, he will remove the word “optional” from my children’s schedule. I am torn about whether I should “force”…
JERUSALEM — Israel is threatening a “harsh reaction” — including the “elimination” of the current Hamas leadership in Gaza and the possible expulsion of Yasser Arafat from Ramallah — if and when the emerging Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire falls apart. Senior defense officials told the Forward this week that despite widely reported progress in security contacts between…
WASHINGTON — Despite intense efforts by the Bush administration to broker a temporary cease-fire agreement between Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the extremist Hamas organization, officials on all sides are making it plain that Palestinian visions of the cease-fire differ drastically — and perhaps dangerously — from Israeli and American views. The United States has…
Ever since Sinai, Moses has been promulgating laws. A midrash informs us that Korah, the rebel leader from next week’s Torah portion, has a plan: If even just a few of those regulations, whose intricate details are assumed to be weighted with significance, can be made to appear capricious and nonsensical, the people may begin…
Just days after being formally charged with inciting an anti-Muslim mob, the deputy prime minister of India was feted this month at a dinner organized by the American Jewish community’s oldest civil rights organization. On May 31, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation charged eight people, including Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, with helping to incite…
JERUSALEM — The Knesset will hold a special meeting of its Constitution, Law and Justice Committee next week to discuss recent rulings and declarations by prominent right-wing rabbis who have rejected the government’s authority to cede land to the Palestinians under a future peace deal. The meeting was called by Labor lawmaker and former Knesset…
At the Nuremberg trials, Nazi leader Hermann Goering explained what has to be done to win popular support for a war. “Why, of course, people don’t want war,” he said. “But, it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked…
California Democrats are attempting to mobilize Jewish communal leaders against the recall of Governor Gray Davis as part of an apparent bid to deflect attention from Davis’s record to the question of whether recalling a sitting governor serves the state’s stability. Plans are in the works for a July 8 news conference at which a…
I once heard gay mystery novelist Michael Nava say that he found that some of his most devoted fans were straight, and they read his work because they love to see the world through a different perspective. It turns out that readers of “crime fiction” — a British term for mysteries that is gaining popularity…
Gerard Edery, a composer, singer and guitarist, was born in Casablanca and raised in Paris and New York City by parents of Spanish, Moroccan and Argentine heritage. Though dormant for many years, Edery’s Judeo-Spanish roots came through in his love of music and song. “The music became a means to reassert my heritage,” Edery said…
הערט אַן אַרטיקל וועגן אַ באַליבטער מעשׂה פֿון אַ באָבע מיט די אייניקלעך און אַ צווייטן אַרטיקל וועגן חסידישע מעשׂיות.
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