Two recently posted articles in the Jewish Internet magazine Tablet provide an excellent introduction to anyone interested in the fascinating and problem-fraught field of Yiddish historical linguistics. One, by Cherie Woodworth, a scholar of Eastern European history who died last year, at the sadly young age of 46, first appeared in the journal Kritika in…
Violent protests sparked by the abduction and killing of a Palestinian teenager spread to Arab villages in Israel on Saturday, presenting a new challenge to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel has stayed silent on the investigation into the death of an East Jerusalem youth who Palestinians believe was kidnapped and killed by…
The cousin of a Palestinian revenge attack victim who was beaten by Israeli troops is a fun-loving all-American high school student from Tampa, Fla., relatives said. Tariq Khdeir, 15, earned a summer vacation to visit relatives in the Holy Land by scoring straight A’s in tenth grade — and was occupied with the soccer World…
American Jewry’s primary umbrella group on Israel is embarking on a path of reform that is expected to shift more power toward larger Jewish groups within the influential confederation’s membership. The process will involve a major structural overhaul for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. According to several communal officials involved in…
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, one of the important Jewish innovators in postwar America, inspiration to a generation and ecumenical spiritualist, died on July 3 aged 89. A tireless organizer and spiritual architect, Schachter-Shalomi single-handedly created a new form of Jewish practice and spirituality known as Jewish Renewal, founded on the idea of Gaia consciousness: the notion…
I last spent time with Reb Zalman a month ago, during Shavuot at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center. He looked and felt like all of his 89 years — and he told us as much. As in “The December Project,” his collaboration with Sara Davidson on the late years of life, Reb Zalman was entirely…
We don’t regret a thing. That’s the message from Jewish groups that helped draft a religious liberty law that the U.S. Supreme Court relied upon June 30 for its controversial Hobby Lobby ruling. Many Jewish groups, mostly liberal ones, were alarmed by the 5–4 decision, which found that for-profit corporations could opt out of a…
Most people who recognize Jennifer Weiner know her as an author of fiction aimed at women, a writer whose pastel-covered covers perennially crowd the best-seller list and command an audience most novelists would salivate over. She has written 11 books and had one made into a rom-com starring Cameron Diaz (the 2005 film “In Her…
There’s a painter’s ladder leaning against the outside wall of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s tomb in Queens. If you climb to the top rung, you can look down at the barefooted mourners throwing notes onto Schneerson’s grave as the men in security vests hustle them out to make room for the next group. On the…
(JTA) — Two decades ago the Jewish community united in support of landmark religious freedom legislation. Now the Supreme Court’s application of that law has Jewish groups divided. Leading Jewish advocacy groups denounced the court’s 5-4 decision Monday in the Hobby Lobby case granting religious freedoms protections to companies, while Orthodox groups lauded the ruling….
(JTA) — Peering through dusty apartment widows isn’t an uncommon pastime in this capital city’s crime-infested 8th District, with its many drug addicts and alcoholics seeking for a fix. But Adam Schoenberger wasn’t scouting for a place to rob on his peeping tour of the district earlier this month. An activist who recently moved his…
אין פֿאַרגלײַך מיט די פֿיזישע פּאַוויליאָנען געשאַפֿן פֿון אָפֿיציעלע לענדער איז דער ייִדישלאַנד־פּאַוויליאָן געבויט אויף אידעעס
