WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has accepted Israel’s position that the Palestinian Authority must take action against terrorism and implement substantial reforms before Israel is required to begin implementing the internationally sponsored “road map” to Israeli-Palestinian peace, including a freeze on settlement activity. At the same time, however, the administration has quietly begun preparing the…
If the election just held in Israel showed a strong democracy in action, it also highlighted certain weaknesses of Israel’s system. There was an uproar in mid-January when a Supreme Court justice ordered broadcasters to pull the plug on the prime minister during a live press conference (which the justice said was campaign propaganda). There…
WASHINGTON — Given Saddam Hussein’s penchant for rambling in interviews and tendency to appear dazzled by the luster of his own flowery Arabic, longtime observers of the Iraqi dictator have come to not expect much in the way of eloquence from him. That is why they were so surprised and impressed with Saddam’s sit-down last…
So my question is, How would you say “you guys” in Yiddish? I don’t mean literally. I mean in that sociologically significant way that it has spread like a fog across the linguistic landscape from coast to coast. Usually, Yiddish can do anything idiomatic English can do, only better. But this one stumps me. An…
As the race for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination gains momentum, the nine declared candidates in the field are in an unusually tough scramble for the backing of wealthy donors who fuel the nation’s campaign apparatus. But this year’s Democratic campaign is not like other years’ campaigns. Given the size of the field, candidates are…
it was a mistake spirit not stuff was the directive middle management archon screwed it up botched creation I am called thinking of the invisible I am called unchangeable voice aeons of aeons I ams of I ams meat’s the error meet the terror of failure of gravity the weight of stuckness irritate the pearl…
Two of the most powerful Jewish charities in North America are trading accusations of undercutting each other’s efforts. The United Jewish Communities, the roof body of North American Jewish federations, complained in a February 28 letter that one of its primary overseas partners, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, is undermining UJC by appealing directly…
Ze’ev Orzech writes from Corvallis, Ore: I just read your column on the Swahili mistake of taking the syllable “ki” of kitabu [the Swahili word for “book,” from Arabic kitab] for a prefix. I had the opposite experience in Jerusalem some years ago. I had put my car in a garage to have various things…
The late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach was masterful with a guitar and had a sweet way with words. But the late “singing rabbi” hit a flat note when it came to paperwork: The chasidic maestro rarely penned contracts, licenses or copyrights — and never composed a will. As a result, a multimillion-dollar global music industry flourishes…
Bay Area poet David Meltzer has been exploring the pathways of Jewish mysticism for contemporary poetry since the 1960s and his own generosity as a publisher and reader of poetry has inspired generations of poets — including those he teaches at the graduate poetics program of the New College of California at San Francisco. He…
The newest entrant into the 2004 Democratic presidential field started out as a distinct long-shot, and his first major salvo of the campaign isn’t likely to increase his odds of success. But Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio is sticking to his, um, guns. “Why is the U.S. going it alone? I say it’s about oil,”…
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