Eve Sicular began drumming when she was 8. But it wasn’t until her senior year at Harvard — she got her bachelor’s in Russian history and literature — that she first heard klezmer. She followed the suggestion of a musician friend and checked out the Klezmer Conservancy Band. Her reaction? “Wow!” In 1989, Sicular attended…
Illinois State Comptroller Dan Hynes is considered the early favorite for the Democratic nomination in the race to succeed his state’s Republican senator, Peter Fitzgerald, who decided last month not to run for re-election. The son of another popular politician, Hynes, 34, can count on the support of Cook County’s Democratic machine and his own…
Concert pianist Stacey Rose, whose career has brought her throughout the U. S. and to more than eight countries around the world, performed a solo recital at the Center Church on the Green in New Haven, Conn., on April 5. The concert was a tribute to her former nanny, Mrs. Lula Maie Rose, with proceeds…
Kathi Diamant didn’t really like Franz Kafka when she first read him. Even today — more than 30 years after she first read “The Metamorphosis” — she doesn’t express the kind of veneration one would expect from the director of the Kafka Project at San Diego State University. “I prefer Kafka’s personal writing to his…
At the release party last month for the latest Kabbalah Centre tome, “The 72 Names of God: Technology for the Soul,” the talk was not of Jewish mystical practices, but of Madonna. Madonna, Madonna! The Material Mom lent her unparalleled star power to the affair, during which the media hordes waited hours behind velvet ropes…
TEL AVIV — Israel’s Supreme Court has been asked to block the installation of the nation’s newly elected Ashkenazic chief rabbi, because of allegations that include incompetence, extorting money from marrying couples, forging signatures on marriage contracts and sexual abuse of women and boys. The rabbi, Yona Metzger, currently a neighborhood rabbi in northern Tel…
About 700,000 public-sector workers, including more than 200,000 teachers, launched a nationwide strike this week effectively shutting down almost all government services offered by the state. The strike, which began Wednesday, was called to protest the government’s introduction of legislation that would cut $2.35 billion from Israel’s $56 billion state budget, on top of a…
My husband and I are taking our three children to Italy this summer on a family vacation. My husband travels frequently on business and has accrued thousands of frequent flyer miles. He wants to use his miles to upgrade our tickets to first-class while our children fly coach. I am shocked that he could even…
Matthew Penn, 89, executive director emeritus of the Jewish Communal Service Association of North America, died on April 3 in Portland, Maine, of Alzheimer’s disease. Penn was born in Russia in 1913 and came to Philadelphia with his family at age 8. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, and earned his graduate degree in social…
This week’s portion, Kedoshim, is a collection of injunctions, mainly ethical. In the JPS translation, Leviticus 19:18 reads: “Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” W. H. Auden, in an early poem, offers a sly critique of the problems posed by the attempt to put this commandment into practice: “You shall love your…
TEREZIN, CZECH REPUBLIC — Theresienstadt, the Nazis’ “model” ghetto, whose remains were nearly washed away by the waters of the Elbe and Eger rivers in last August’s disastrous floods, is on its way back to model condition. Thanks to the generosity of Jews throughout the world who answered cries for help, the site through which…
אין דעם אַרטיקל קענט איר אויך זען אַן אינטערוויו וואָס דער קאָפּאָזיטאָר און מוזיקער ר׳ צודיק האָט מיר איר געפֿירט וועגן דעם נײַ ליד.
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