PARIS — The “boycott Israel” campaign in academic circles has crossed the English Channel. After a furious debate arose several months ago after two Israeli professors were removed from advisory positions on a pair of academic journals in England, the movement is now finding support in some French universities. Late last month, the board of…
WASHINGTON — Deteriorating economic and social conditions in the West Bank and Gaza soon may render the territories ungovernable, according to a growing number of reports from Israeli and American government agencies and international humanitarian organizations. With the Bush administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace-making efforts on hold until after Israeli elections in late January — and probably…
Moadim Lesimcha: Explorations into the Jewish Holidays By Rabbi Shlomo Aviner Urim Publications, 208 pages, $22. * * *| The ideological quandary of almost all post-Enlightenment Jews has been how, and even whether, to be both modern and Jewish. Modern Jews, in contradistinction to merely contemporary ones, are, of course, those who say it can…
BETHEL, Conn. — Mohamed Ghounem is looking for a few lapsed Jews. The Egyptian-born Ghounem is the founder and Web master of “Jews For Allah,” a missionary Web site designed as the Islamic answer to Jews For Jesus. And while Ghounem is no great fan of Jews For Jesus — he calls Christians “flesh-god worshippers”…
In Chapter 56, Neil took his own life by the side of the road. Moe Alter was staring at his computer. On the screen was an e-mail from the polling firm he had hired with funds from the Mayor’s last campaign. The Mayor’s radio speech was corny. But then the Mayor was corny, and the…
WASHINGTON — Jack Abramoff needed a kosher restaurant in Washington to which to take his clients and congressional contacts. So he created one. Two, actually. Just like he started an Orthodox Jewish day school when he wasn’t impressed with the one his son was attending, and a high school yeshiva when his son graduated from…
Survivors To File Lawsuits American Holocaust survivors who formerly owned property in Poland are planning to file a battery of lawsuits in Europe to put greater pressure on Poland to pass a satisfactory property restitution law. The effort comes in response to legislation introduced into Poland’s Parliament last month that would return only meager compensation….
THE MUSES Mrs. Sperling, Mrs. Meadow, my grandmother, Gusty — evening, porch, shadows, robed in cotton dresses, buttoned-up sweaters, hair tied back in buns under babushkas, wire-rim spectacles and heavy black shoes. Twittering in Yiddish. Even when young they looked old. Each had at least one deaf ear, how they looked directly at you when…
Of Noteworthy Items in the Press First Things First: In this corner: “Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense; Richard Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon’s Policy Board; William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, and other neoconservatives [who] see removing Saddam Hussein as an overriding priority, and Hussein himself as a figure of…
This is the first in a three-part series. * * *| Every American schoolchild has learned the rhyme, “In 1492/ Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” It’s too often forgotten that this was the very same year in which Columbus’s patrons, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, issued an edict expelling all Jews from Spain. Before the…
On January 7, 2002, former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped through the two-doored entry chamber of a prison sallyport. After the first fudge-brown steel and armored glass door slowly closed right-to-left behind him, Netanyahu passed his hand beneath a black light reader along the left wall. It illuminated a small security stamp on his…
100% of profits support our journalism
