Josie’s childhood is already pretty different from mine. I took my first airplane flight when I was a year old (to see Grandma in Florida); she took hers at 5 weeks (to see Auntie Ellen wed in Milwaukee). I wasn’t present at my own baby-naming; my dad ran into shul on a Monday morning and…
As a young man living in the Amalgamated Houses in the Bronx, Daniel Libeskind — the architect selected this week to rebuild the World Trade Center site — recalls being immersed in an environment in which progressive politics, Yiddish literary debates and a community spirit thrived. “It shaped me completely,” Libeskind told the Forward. It’s…
The “winds of war” were on hold aboard the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum for the February 14 Intrepid Museum Foundation’s Salute to Freedom Award dinner honoring Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Greetings by the foundation’s chief operating officer, Bill White, got the festive evening under way. The crowd comprised political and military brass including New York…
OAKLAND — Michael Arthur Newdow scored another legal win last week in his crusade to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, but the Bush administration is vowing not to give up the fight. An avowed atheist and resident of Sacramento, Calif., Newdow claimed victory again February 28 when a federal appeals court refused…
My February 7 “Ask Wendy” column on collective punishment was ill received by many readers. Whenever I discover that my opinion is in the minority — a minority of one, it seems — I am prepared to take my licks in public. The points made in the letters below are compelling and valid, and I…
Lauder Criticized on Art A recently reported admission by cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder that he owns artwork with questionable provenance is raising hackles among activists seeking to recover Nazi-stolen art, especially given Lauder’s top post in one such restitution project. Lauder, chairman of the World Jewish Congress’s Commission for Art Recovery, acknowledged to The New…
Mark Warshawsky (1840-1907) was a versatile poet whose songs voiced both hope and despair, depending on the situation he was describing. In his poem-song “Dem Milner’s Trern” (“The Miller’s Tears”), he sounds a note of melancholy. It is a dark dirge about the Jews who are being driven from their shtetl in czarist Russia. To…
Israel has yet to submit its special request for American aid — an expected $4 billion in financial aid and $8 billion in loan guarantees — but there already are campaigns to block, curtail or condition the package. This week, the Arab American Institute called on its supporters to call the White House and their…
We live in a pressure cooker. You can’t watch the news or read a newspaper without being bombarded with stories about war and terror threats. Our government gives us tips on how to prepare for possible chemical, biological or radiological attacks. The economy and stock market continue to sag. The Jewish psyche is taking a…
When New Jersey’s controversial poet laureate, Amiri Baraka, spoke at Yale University February 24, many members of the Jewish campus community were appalled. Why, they wondered, would the university’s Afro-American Cultural Center and black student group host someone who had sparked a national uproar only five months earlier with a poem suggesting Israel had prior…
This week’s portion, Pekude, covers the last chapters of Exodus and so is a good place to try to draw some general lessons from our story of stories. The poets have been finding metaphors and similes in Exodus for quite some time. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), for example, found in the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-6)…
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