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Wolfowitz Slammed on Turkey Comment
A veteran Democratic congressman is calling for the resignation of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, claiming the Pentagon official is “undermining” democracy in Turkey. Speaking from the floor of the House of Representatives on Monday, Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank called on Wolfowitz to resign over remarks he made in an interview that aired on CNN…
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Tzedakah and the Ethics of Taxation
When are taxes just, and when are they unjust? When is a tax cut just, and when is it unjust? These are questions currently convulsing Washington. In the debate, almost constant reference has been made to the economic impact of each of the possible decisions. Unfortunately little, if any, attention is paid to the ethical…
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For the Health of Our Nation, Insure All American Children
In the richest, most advanced country in the world in the 21st century, it’s simply wrong for sick children to go without seeing a doctor because their parents can’t afford it. It’s wrong for a woman to find out she has late-stage breast cancer, because she couldn’t afford a mammogram. It’s wrong for seniors to…
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Parley Takes a Fresh Look at World’s Oldest ‘Demon’
There is often comfort in the familiar, even in a familiar evil. That is why in the analysis of antisemitism, the historical approach, the search for continuities, is often an emotionally and rhetorically conflicted one. Casting one’s eyes back on the past millennia of persecution offers a terrifying vista. But if such a perspective can…
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Disappeared: A Flawed Film on Argentina’s Past Blames Wrong Party
Spring is film festival time. This year, among others making the rounds is Israeli filmmaker Nurit Kedar’s documentary “Asesino.” The film, which was shown at the Brooklyn Jewish Film Festival and at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival on May 7, presents itself as an angry testimonial to the injustice committed against Argentine Jews whose family…
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Ashkenazim Storm Sepharad
In 1986, when Buenos Aires native Isidoro Gravier decided it was time to find a better future for his family, he moved to Madrid, thinking he could settle comfortably into the established Jewish community there. But it was not so easy. “The people were very friendly and supportive,” he recalled, “but the culture felt alien…
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Hidden: A Holocaust Documentary That Resists Easy Answers
There are many amazing aspects about Aviva Slesin’s “Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII,” a documentary that details the lives and memories of adults survivors who, as Jewish children, were taken in by gentile families during the years of the Holocaust. But perhaps most amazing are the things it is not. It…
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Russian Student Uncovers Community’s History
MOSCOW — Twice a day for 10 years, Alexei Evstratov passed by an abandoned cemetery in his hometown of Borisoglebsk. “I knew that this was a cemetery, but not until a few month ago did I know it was a Jewish cemetery,” said the 11th-grader, who is not Jewish. He decided to take research matters…
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The Assassins: Part II
Where were we? Ah, yes: With the ninth-century Qarmatians in southern Iraq. In 899 they actually founded an independent state on the Persian Gulf under the leadership of Hamdan Qarmat’s disciple Sa’id al-Hasan al-Jannabi. For a century this state staged bloody raids on neighboring principalities as far off as Syria. Eventually, the Qarmatian state was…
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No Simple Task: Breaking Television’s Jewish Barrier
Rabbi Irwin Kula is no stranger to public exposure. As president of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, he lectures constantly across the country. He’s written several books and has been a guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Right now, though, Kula is adjusting to an entirely new order of notoriety. He’s…
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The Last Professional Yiddish Theater Looks Ahead
Leon Kobrin’s classic Yiddish play “The Girl Next Door” (“Di Nekstdorike”) revolves around the question: Who would make a better wife — an observant and modest, pretty shtetl girl or a sleazy, shameful adulteress who pretends to be an American “lady”? It seems that for poor Velvele, the choice is not so cut and dried….
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