Leon Elnekave, the affable leader of the dwindling Jewish community of Bursa, Turkey’s old Ottoman capital, met my wife and me on a narrow, cobbled lane and unlocked the black wrought iron gate to the 500-year-old Gerush Synagogue. As he led us into the landscaped courtyard, my wife, Sallie, suddenly began to cry. “I don’t…
BARON DAVID DE ROTHSCHILD HONORED AT YIVO’s 87th ANNUAL BENEFIT GALA “I’m not Franco-centric, but you understand from my Gallic English that I am French,” said Baron David de Rothschild, honoree at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research’s 87th Benefit, which was held at the Center for Jewish History on December 4. A sixth-generation descendant…
In this week’s Reporters Roundtable podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by Forward arts and culture editor Adam Langer to discuss our top choices for film, exhibitions, books and art. Then Digital News Editor Dave Goldiner talks about what goes into making picks for the top news stories in 2012. <strong>Subscribe to Forward podcasts on…
Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has big shoes to fill. Appointed this week as the 11th British chief rabbi, he will succeed Jonathan Sacks, an internationally renowned author and public intellectual who speaks frequently on moral, philosophical and theological affairs. The widespread assumption among British Jews has long been that a Mirvis chief rabbinate would be quite…
Israel’s Central Elections Committee rejected motions to prevent haredi and ultra-nationalist political parties from running in next month’s elections. The committee voted unanimously to allow the haredi Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties to run in the election, dismissing petitions to bar them from running for excluding women. The committee also voted 17 to…
Guilty on all 59 counts: guilty, guilty, guilty. On Monday, December 10, a jury of 12 found Nechemya Weberman enormously guilty. The jurors convicted him of sexually abusing an underage girl entrusted to his care. They declared the respected member of the ultra-Orthodox community to be a criminal and a fraud, and thousands of survivors,…
After the Forward published an investigation into sexual abuse allegations against two former staff members at a high school for boys run by Yeshiva University, Y.U. issued an immediate statement and said that it would investigate. Later that day, Modern Orthodoxy’s official rabbinic association, the Rabbinical Council of America, said it was “deeply troubled” by…
Most of America knew the great director, writer, actor and impresario Isaiah Sheffer through his deep lullaby of a voice, the one that guided them through his popular weekly syndicated radio show, “Selected Shorts.” But a bittersweet reminder of the many other gifts and achievements of the multitalented stage veteran was provided at the December…
New York businessman Jacob Ostreicher, who has been jailed in Bolivia for 18 months, was released on Tuesday on bail at the order of a judge. The judge, Eneas Gentilli ordered Ostreicher to post a bail equal to $14,400 and to stay in house arrest within the city of Santa Cruz. According to the Associated…
Noah Pozner, the Jewish boy killed in the Newtown school massacre, was laid to rest Monday in the first of a wrenching string of funerals for the victims of the senseless rampage. The slain boy’s mother, Veronique Pozner, led scores of mourners at a packed funeral home in Fairfied, Conn. that was festooned in white…
Jacob Lew, the White House chief of staff, discussed allegations of past sexual abuse at Yeshiva University’s affiliated high school in his speech to the university’s annual Chanukah convocation. Lew, an Orthodox Jew, made the remarks on Sunday evening during his address at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where he was receiving an honorary doctorate…
