NEW SQUARE, N. Y. — Skver chasidim from Brooklyn to Montreal are discussing the latest miracle: New Square’s talking fish. In the back of a local fish market, more than a month ago — so the story goes — a carp opened its mouth and declared that it was the soul of a childless Canadian…
Tisch Eyed for Conference James Tisch has reportedly emerged as the leading candidate to be the next chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, according to a report in the New York Sun Wednesday. The Sun reports that Tisch, the CEO of Loews Corp and chairman of the board of the…
Jews are not big drinkers. Maybe it’s because kishke and cocktails don’t mix. Maybe it’s because we’re too neurotic to kick back with a six-pack. Or maybe it’s because we know our mothers would kill us if we made a drunken spectacle of ourselves. Whatever the reason, many Jews will choose milk over a martini…
OAKLAND — A San Francisco Jewish group is moving forward with plans to honor the city’s police chief, who this week was cleared after being indicted in one of the highest-profile police scandals in recent American history. The Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal, a human rights group working on behalf of Jews…
Over the years, Purim has had its ups and downs. Sometimes marked with exuberance and at other times barely noted, its lot in America has not been a happy one. In New York of the 1860s, for instance, fancy dress balls and masques were all the rage. “Astonishing the lovers of fun and good society,”…
WASHINGTON — As a wide coalition of civil rights organizations, unions, faith-based groups and medical professionals launched “Cover the Uninsured Week” Monday, a new study published this week shows an alarming increase in the number of Americans without health insurance. The report, prepared for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is the chief funder of…
I grew up as the model “good Jewish girl.” I attended day school. At college, I taught part time at a Hebrew school and was vice president of my university’s Hillel chapter. I even worked for the Jewish community after graduation. Yet when I started dating a Buddhist, I suddenly felt that the community that…
Ahava, the Israeli Dead Sea cosmetics line, is at the center of a court battle as caustic as the world’s saltiest body of water. And a federal court has recently weighed in on the mudslinging. The official American distributor of Ahava, Ahava USA, has succeeded in getting Manhattan federal Judge Victor Marrero to bar an…
This week’s portion, Vayikra, opens with a phrase translated as “And the Lord called to Moses.” The call to a prophet such as Moses summons him to a task, a vocation, a calling, that is not freely chosen, a task that the true prophet shrinks from because he feels, and is, inadequate to it. The…
Three American citizens residing in Israel lost their lives in two separate terrorist attacks during the last week. Abigail Litle, 14, a Haifa eighth grader, was killed when the No. 37 bus she was riding after school blew up last Wednesday. A 20-year-old Hamas militant named Mahmoud Hamdan Kawasme of Hebron had detonated a bomb…
The word “hamantashen,” which makes its distinguished appearance at Purim time, cannot be translated into English. The word refers to Haman, the evil pre-Hitler Hitler who wished to wipe out the Jews of ancient Persia. The word “tashn” means pockets. The combined word refers to a delicacy served at Purim in which dough is shaped…
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