A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators has sent a letter to Cuban President Raul Castro urging the release of an American contractor jailed in Cuba for nearly three years, saying his detention is “a major obstacle” to improving relations. The letter, signed by 44 senators, is the strongest appeal yet by members of Congress in…
The Hamas government has barred much of Gaza’s fruit imports from Israel, citing a need to cultivate local Palestinian agriculture and for “resistance” against the Jewish state. The ban is opposed by Gazan produce traders who fear a squeeze on supplies and price hikes in the poor coastal enclave, which has a largely black market…
An American Jew’s desperate plea to Israel and the American Jewish community for help has highlighted his plight as a captive of Al Qaeda in Pakistan, which has held him for more than a year. In two videotaped messages released by the terror group in September, Warren Weinstein, a foreign aid contract worker from Maryland,…
French right-wing politician Marine Le Pen clarified her support of a ban on wearing kipahs in public. Le Pen, leader of the National Front, told French television on Saturday that “Jewish skullcaps are obviously not a problem in our country,” but France has to “ban them in the name of equality,” Haaretz reported. A day…
If Secretary of State Hillary Clinton harbors ambitions to run for president, she is keeping them under tight wraps. “I have no earthly idea what she’ll decide to do,” her husband, former President Bill Clinton, said on CBS television’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. Although Hillary Clinton went down to defeat to President Barack Obama…
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next goes to the polls, he looks set to have a stronger chorus of support from the national media than any Israeli candidate in the last half-century. The next election must take place by October 2013, and the main international and domestic challenges facing the Israeli leader are not likely…
(Reuters) — Marc Leder, the host of the fundraiser where Mitt Romney labeled 47 percent of Americans as people who paid no tax and believed the government has a responsibility to care for them, has spent most of his career in relative obscurity. But the 51-year-old private equity executive, who made his fortune buying and…
“Why Manger?” I asked Matthew “Motl” Didner, producer and associate artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre—Folksbiene production of “Reflections of a Lost Poet: The Life and Works of Itzik Manger,” at the show’s September 9 performance, held at Baruch College’s Engelman Recital Hall. “Because it is the perfect companion piece to his ‘Megile of…
An ad in a Washington-area Metro station urges a congressional staffer to give his ex-wife a Jewish divorce decree. The ad, in the Wheaton station in suburban Maryland, features a photo of Aharon Friedman, who works for U.S. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), and urges the Silver Spring, Md., resident to “Give a Get Now!” A…
As Iranian Jews prepared traditional Rosh Hashanah pots of abgoosht — the community’s lamb-based answer to Ashkenazi chicken soup — the topic on many of their minds was a somber one. Will Israel strike at the place Iranian Jews once called home? “A lot of people are talking about it, and it is a topic…
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by Forward Washington correspondent Nathan Guttman and Editor Jane Eisner to discuss Mitt Romney’s apparent dismissal of the two-state solution in a speech in May. Then, the group turns to Eisner’s recent editorial, in which she compares political party platforms from 2012 and 1980. They may…
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