To mark the 100th birthday and 10th yarzheit of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, various institutions are mounting a number of events in the coming year to celebrate the memory and achievements of the 20th-century Jewish thinker and leader of Modern Orthodoxy. Indeed, the commemorations have already started. Two recent conferences regaled participants with tales, teachings…
‘Most walkouts have been Jews, older Jews, and that’s understandable,” comedian Sarah Silverman said about her audiences. “I have a ton of Holocaust stuff, and some of it is really hard core.” “Hard core” is a good term for Silverman’s comedy. This controversial 32-year-old performer specializes in edgy jokes about race and sex as well…
Citing a $2 million budget deficit, the Reform movement’s synagogue body is eliminating the positions of its 13 regional outreach coordinators, the staffers charged with making Reform congregations welcoming to interfaith families. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations must eliminate more than 30 positions to make up the shortfall, which represents about 10% of its…
The most prominent Orthodox organization in the United States is seeking to redefine its agenda after a tumultuous period that included a sexual abuse scandal and a perceived rightward shift of a large part of its constituency. At its biannual convention last weekend in New York, leaders of the Orthodox Union said they took pains…
THE WONDERS OF AMERICA As the temperature dips, many of us set our sights on the Bahamas or the Virgin Islands or the Turks and Caicos, whose gentle climes and abundant sunshine promise a respite from the dreariness of winter. Our grandparents and great-grandparents set theirs on Miami Beach, whose population grew by leaps and…
A Jordanian delegation resumed repair work on the Temple Mount’s southern wall in Jerusalem’s Old City Monday. The delegation, headed by Raef Najim, vice president of the state-run Jordanian Construction Company and a former Jordanian minister responsible for the Jordanian waqf, or Islamic religious trust, has been authorized to work on the Temple Mount by…
I am a full-time mother with three children under the age of 8. Like all children, mine are masters at testing my patience and pushing my buttons. Still, I manage to hold it together. I don’t often lose my temper, but when I do I am able to apologize to my kids and move on….
Responding to comments made by Health Minister Nissim Dahan, in which the minister from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party said that non-observant Jews should not immigrate to Israel, Prime Minister Sharon said Sunday that the process to convert to Judaism should be shortened. “It should be made possible for anyone who wants to become a Jew…
And the Lord said unto Moses: ‘Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh; lo, he cometh forth to the water, and say unto him…. — Exodus 8:16 The banks of the Nile. Pharaoh raises his hands in benediction to bless the Nile. Moses steps from the rushes. Moses: ’Morning. Pharaoh:Crikey, you scared…
STAMFORD, Conn. — Breaking a longstanding taboo, a leading Orthodox Jewish advocacy group held an open discussion at its national convention here last week that touched on the question of whether Orthodox communities might themselves be partly to blame when civic conflicts arise with their non-Jewish or non-Orthodox neighbors. The December 27 roundtable discussion at…
Eliezer Steinbarg (1880-1932) was a Yiddish Aesop in poetic form. And, as in the case of Aesop’s fables, the meaning of his allegories is as much dependent on the reader as on the writer. His contemporaries thought highly of him. One of them, the famous Hayyim Nahman Bialik, wrote: “Each fable has its own charm…
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