Picking up the largest prize to date in the Republican presidential race, Mitt Romney pounded Newt Gingrich to win the Florida primary by a impressive 15% margin and restored himself as the frontrunner in the up-and-down race for the nomination. Romney, who had been considered too passive, found a new and much more aggressive voice…
When a government probe into allegations of treason caused the charismatic Arab politician Azmi Bishara to resign his Knesset seat and flee Israel in 2007, Dr. Ahmad Tibi, a former aide to PLO leader Yasir Arafat, leaped easily to the fore as his community’s most prominent national advocate. Like Bishara, he gained notice, too, as…
Back in my dating days, there was always a moment of panic when I brought a guy home to my apartment for the first time. I dreaded that (seemingly endless) minute of lingering about, of analyzing and judging — my bookshelf. I thought about those uncomfortable moments the other day, as I was unpacking my…
Republican voters prepared to go to the polls Tuesday in the Florida primary after a campaign in which the candidates paid scant attention to the Sunshine State’s 500,000-strong Jewish community. The two leading candidates, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich spent much of their time in central and northern Florida and all but ignored the heavily…
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Sunday that Iran is only one year away from producing a nuclear weapon. In an interview on the CBS show “60 Minutes,” Panetta said that “the consensus is that, if they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce…
They may be disunited and unskilled in the ways of Washington, but as carnage continues in Syria, exiled Syrian dissidents in the United States are urging the Obama administration to actively support opposition forces struggling to bring down the regime of Bashar al-Assad. A loose network of activists — some newly arrived, but most part…
Why do fundamentalists always end up wrapping women in shmattes? I ask because, as we’ve seen in Israel’s Beit Shemesh recently, ultra-uber-Orthodox men have been spitting on less-ultra-but-still-Orthodox girls as young as age 8 for wearing clothes that aren’t “modest” enough. The fact that the girls’ outfits seem very modest to most of us just…
Wendy Greuel, who as Los Angeles city controller oversees the city’s finances, is the only one of four Democratic candidates in the 2013 race for mayor who isn’t Jewish, a detail that did not prevent Greuel from attending services at no fewer than four synagogues during last year’s High Holy Days. The synagogue shuttling, as…
The picturesque resort town of Park City is known for many things — among them powdery snow and a prestigious independent film festival. Kosher cuisine, not so much. This may be changing. Just in time for the Sundance Film Festival, which descends on this winter hamlet each January, Canyons Resort opened the glatt kosher Bistro…
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by political science professor Nathan Brown, who recently wrote for the Forward about the Muslim Brotherhood, which has emerged as the dominant political force in Egypt after its first democratic elections. Then, opinion editor Gal Beckerman explains his [recent blog post][1] about Newt Gingrich’s repeated references…
Adam Hasner has a novel recipe for Republican electoral success: mixing a conservative Tea Party platform with mainstream Jewish financial support. The U.S. Senate hopeful from Florida is riding a fast-growing wave of Jewish influence in the Republican Party, which hopes to dramatically expand its electoral support among Jews nationwide, particularly in Florida. On a…
