China may not be the first place that comes to mind at the mention of “Judaic studies,” but nobody can say that this is due to lack of effort on the part of Xu Xin, China’s homegrown Jewish studies dynamo. The founder and director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Nanjing University and president…
‘Artists should be individuals, look for their own way, their own language to express themselves,” Israeli singer Chava Alberstein insists. “No one artist represents” all of Israeli culture. Still, it may be fair to say that if one singer has come to personify Israel through the years, it’s Alberstein. With her mane of curly blond…
AMIA Indictments Sought Prosecutors are asking the judge in charge of investigating into the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires to issue arrest warrants against 16 people, including Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top Hezbollah operative Imad Mughniyeh. The move by the prosecutors was seen by observers as…
Novelist Thane Rosenbaum and klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals will appear at the 92nd Street Y March 5 for a performance of the music that helped inspire Rosenbaum’s 2002 novel, “The Golems of Gotham” (now out in paperback from Harperperennial). Svigals, a founding member of the Klezmatics, will play Ariel, the book’s 14-year-old street-performing violin prodigy,…
BALTIMORE — The Jewish Council for Public Affairs plenum solidly rejected a bid by the Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations Monday to pass a resolution supporting President Bush’s call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The vote was 340 to 308. Language proposed by the Reform movement on Israeli settlement policy…
If you look up “translate” in a dictionary, you may be surprised to find that the first definition is “to bring into the afterlife, without causing death.” This isn’t as peculiar as it sounds. The rabbis teach us that our world is like a vestibule, a waiting room where we prepare ourselves for the World…
A showdown over budget cuts is brewing between the congregational arm of the Reform movement and several prominent Reform rabbis, who charge that the nation’s largest liberal Jewish denomination is crippling its outreach to intermarried families. A number of rabbis have initiated grass-roots fundraising efforts to save the jobs of the movement’s 13 regional outreach…
CHAPTER 64: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND In Chapter 63, Ruth and Augusta exchanged confidences over cocktails. Brooke had an appointment with a divorce lawyer, an old law school classmate of Jacob’s, and she wanted a serious outfit, perhaps a gray suit with a white satin blouse, for their first meeting. She had not…
Unlike many Americans, I have had jugs of Poland Spring water and a month’s supply of beans and rice stored in my tiny Upper West Side kitchen for weeks. My husband, Daniel, beat a path to the local hardware store way before any of them sold out of duct tape and plastic sheeting. For Valentine’s…
JERUSALEM — Under the shadow of the impending American war on Iraq, Prime Minister Sharon is expanding his talks with Palestinians and accelerating his drive for a “secular unity government,” with Labor in tow. Sharon and his advisers have met in recent weeks with a host of Palestinian leaders, including Arafat deputy Abu Mazen and…
Israel is seeking to mobilize American and Jewish support for a diplomatic battle with Belgium after the Belgian Supreme Court upheld a law that would allow the prosecution of Israeli officials — including, eventually, Prime Minister Sharon — for war crimes related to their role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre two decades ago. Israeli…
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