El Al Israel Airlines is reportedly moving to extricate itself from a contract with a New York hotel involved in a labor dispute, after several American unions warned that the airline’s patronage of the hotel “might jeopardize some of the U.S. trade union movement’s historic support for Israel” and “impact the rather significant investment of…
Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, looks every bit the executive, wearing a black turtleneck and gray print blazer and with her brown hair styled into a smart, shiny bob. She sits comfortably in her corner office, one with sweeping views of a blizzard swirling down Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue, 14 stories…
A Reform rabbi who ceded the movement’s top seminary post two years ago over a sex scandal has been appointed to head the Jewish identity-building division of United Jewish Communities, the roof body of North American Jewish welfare federations. Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, the highest-ranking Reform rabbi ever to be suspended from the pulpit, was named…
Susan Weidman Schneider could never have guessed what would follow when, in 1973, she accepted an invitation to lunch from Aviva Cantor, an editor at Hadassah Magazine. Even when Schneider, then a freelance writer, agreed to become involved with a new feminist magazine for Jewish women, she wouldn’t have predicted what it would mean for…
Israel, U.S. Ink Fighter Pact After months of negotiations, Israel last week signed an agreement with the United States outlining the terms of its participation in the development of the Joint Strike Fighter, the next-generation fighter jet. The agreement is in the form of a letter of intent, in which Israel commits itself to paying…
Go to the children’s music section in Tower Records and let the hurling begin. (I realize I promised no mentions of vomit in this week’s column, but my editor is on vacation. Vomit, vomit, vomit. Don’t tell her.) Generally, music intended for children is perky, chipmunk-y, condescending, cloying and unlistenable for anyone old enough to…
Richard Perle is a hot ticket these days. As chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a key advisory panel to the Defense Department, the former Reagan administration official has privileged access to the Pentagon — where he has many friends in senior positions. But as he likes to remind his audiences, Perle speaks only for…
Attempted by many, perfected by few, good barbecue is hard to come by. People build lifelong attachments to a particular restaurant, and I’ve seen grown men weep at the news their favorite joint’s closed down. Don’t think me heartless if I feel no pity for them. For however elusive good barbecue may seem, believe me…
The recent selection of Daniel Libeskind as one of two finalists in the competition to redesign the site of the former World Trade Center in lower Manhattan is, at the most obvious level, a personal triumph that testifies to his status as one of the world’s most respected architects. But it also highlights the unprecedented…
JERUSALEM — The accession to mayor of the United Torah Judaism Party’s Uri Lupoliansky, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, is underscoring the gains that charedim have made in the city during the last decade. For many Israelis, Lupoliansky, who belongs to an extreme ultra-Orthodox sect and represents a non-Zionist party, serves as a symbol of those gains…
As the orchestra played a waltz, the black-tie crowd filed into the Waldorf-Astoria’s ballroom for the National Jewish Outreach Program’s annual dinner February 4. Master of ceremonies and philanthropist Sam Domb — a Holocaust survivor introduced by NJOP founder Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald as “a close and constant advisor to Prime Minister Sharon” — labeled the…
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