Books
Yossi Klein Halevi’s new book, “Like Dreamers,” is about seven of the paratroopers who reunited Jerusalem during the Six Day War in 1967. It is their story and Israel’s story in the years that unfolded. In this excerpt, the first of two being published by the Forward, two of those paratroopers, Hanan Porat and Yoel…
The University of California, Berkeley is launching a Center for Jewish Studies. The university made the announcement of the center, for which it allotted $1 million, on Wednesday. The center will be inaugurated on October 30. “The center will expand the breadth of Jewish studies scholarship here, connect more students to the wealth of Jewish…
Jacob Bender is set to be the voice of Philadelphia-area Muslims, to take on discrimination they encounter in workplace and in the public sphere, and to fight expressions of hate. And his Jewish faith, Bender believes, can only help him do the job effectively. “The Muslim community is under attack from Islamophobic forces, and it…
Civil rights groups are demanding that the FBI solve a 28-year-old California murder long thought to be the work of Jewish extremists. Alex Odeh, the Palestinian-American regional director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, was killed in October 1985 by a pipe bomb that exploded when he opened his office door. No one has ever been…
A smalltown Alabama synagogue has lured 20 Jewish families with a millionaire’s offer of $50,000 to relocate there. Temple Emanu-El in Dothan, Alabama, has offered 20 Jewish families $50,000 to move to their town, the Peanut Capital of the World, and help boost the congregation’s dwindling numbers, the Associated Press reported. Dothan, also known as…
At the recent centennial celebration of American Judaism’s Conservative movement, the top issue on everyone’s mind was nowhere on the formal agenda. But then, when leaders of the movement began planning the schedule for their conference months ago, the landmark survey of American Jews, released on October 1 by the Pew Research Center was still…
One of my mother’s favorite Yiddish proverbs was, “You can’t sit on two horses with one behind.” A fine observation, but growing up in Brooklyn, sitting on even one was unlikely. My own steed was the lid of a sewing machine, a rounded wooden case shaped like a covered bridge with curved corners. Heigh-ho, Singer….
Nine years after the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and more than a year after Al Jazeera broadcast a report claiming he died of radiation exposure to polonium 210, the circumstances of Arafat’s death remain a mystery. Since February of last year, however, teams of Swiss toxicology experts have been seeking to solve the…
From his office above Manhattan’s Financial District, William Rapfogel controlled a charitable empire much larger than most understood. His organization, Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, gave food to poor Jews. But it also cooked up massive real estate deals with powerful for-profit developers, throwing up new low-income housing across the city. All told, Met Council…
While an abandoned suitcase on a Tel Aviv street corner is often cause for panic, when Yosef Halper saw a vintage leatherette travel bag on his commute home from his bookshop a few years ago, he turned around to investigate. “I used to be a compulsive garbage examiner,” he joked. Inside, he discovered a “collector’s…
Convening for its centennial conference under the cloud of a recent survey indicating a steep drop in affiliation, the Conservative synagogue movement is trying to use the landmark gathering to mark a fresh beginning. A hundred years after the group’s founding with an ideal of combining Jewish tradition with modern life, Conservative leaders are hoping…
בײַ ייִדן איז פֿאַראַן אַן אַלטע טראַדיציע צו שרײַבן רײַסישע סגולות מיט ייִדישע אותיות.
