If all the rest is commentary, as Hillel the Elder once said, there once was a time when “all the rest” was all the rage. It has been 58 years since the founding of Commentary magazine, a small Jewish journal devoted to society and culture that eventually landed in some of the most influential mailboxes…
It’s a typical morning at Borough Hall in downtown Brooklyn. Politicians are meeting and greeting, children are dancing jigs and an impressive amount of Irish coffee is being consumed at 9 a.m. The borough’s stentorious president, Marty Markowitz, a smiling, roly-poly man, is wearing a tall striped hat that seems plucked from the pages of…
It was nearly 8 p.m. when the klezmorim danced their way in to greet the crowd, hoisted their instruments on stage and proceeded to make a l’chaim on the berry-flavored schnapps that awaited them in a tall, elegant bottle. The musicians didn’t look like Old World incarnates in their sleek black ensembles, nor did they…
BERKELEY, Calif. — A Modern Orthodox congregation that hoped to build a replica of the wooden synagogue of Przedborz, Poland, has reluctantly abandoned its dream after failing to garner national financial support for the project. Instead of re-creating the famous 17th-century structure destroyed by the Nazis, Congregation Beth Israel will spend the $2 million raised…
Literary awards come and go, but some just stick around quietly separating young writers with promise from those dripping with glitz — especially these days, when hype and hard cash are being thrown at writers in the under-30 class. All of which makes the Edward Lewis Wallant Book Award worth celebrating as it approaches its…
America’s central Jewish representative body is naming a billionaire philanthropist and tobacco mogul as its new chairman. James Tisch, president of Loews Corp. and chairman of United Jewish Communities, was selected by a nominating committee last Friday to become chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. If confirmed by the full…
A SERIALIZED NOVEL By Anne Roiphe CHAPTER 67: CRIMES OF PASSION, FISH OF SADNESS In Chapter 66, Rabbi Gedali wept as the wild imp danced. * * *| Yonny, who had dropped out of the yeshiva because he was what in another part of town would be called a slow learner, had gotten a job…
Silver screen star Mel Gibson is raising red flags for some Jewish groups, who fear that a movie he is making will resurrect the age-old charge that Jews are responsible for Jesus’ death. The heads of the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center questioned Gibson’s motives after a March 9 New York Times Magazine…
Manhattan is the Planet of Fabulous Single Girls. All those “Sex and the City” stereotypes? True! The streets are full of kitten-heeled, ginger-saketini-drinking, cell-phone- clutching, expert-hair-color-sporting, yoga-mat-carrying chicks who get to spend hours reading the Sunday Times unmolested by toddlers chanting “Elmo! Elmo! Elmo! Elmo!” and husbands chanting “Do we have Bulgarian feta? I thought…
Secretary of State Colin Powell took the unusual step last week of assuring members of Congress that a “small cabal” of pro-Israeli American Jews is not orchestrating President Bush’s war push. Powell made his statement during a House appropriations subcommittee hearing March 13 dealing with foreign aid. “The strategy with respect to Iraq has derived…
‘I was born in 1911. What am I: 90? 92?” Cy Feuer asked a visitor to his Upper East Side apartment. The 92-year-old show-business veteran can be forgiven for being a little foggy on his age — he remembers plenty about his long and storied career. He spells out the tales of his life as…
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