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Sex-Segregation Spreads Among Orthodox
When a recent online exposé revealed that women on a city-franchised bus were required to sit in the back, those who seemed to be least outraged were the women who actually ride the bus and live in the two heavily Orthodox Brooklyn neighborhoods it connects. “It never bothered me,” said Rachel Freier, a lawyer from…
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Reps Want U.S. To Protect Jewish Sites in Libya
Sixteen House Democrats, including 10 top Jewish members, wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to use her influence to preserve Jewish sites in Libya. “They are tangible evidence of a once open and tolerant chapter in its past and can serve as a visible symbol of a more hopeful future,” said…
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Reporters’ Roundtable: Eli Valley’s Horror Comic; Orthodox Sex Abuse and Gender Segregation
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by Forward artist in residence Eli Valley to discuss his new comic that takes a “ghoulish” look at Israel’s missed opportunities. Then, staff writer Paul Berger gives an update on the case of Baruch Lebovits, a high-profile convicted Orthodox sex offender. Finally, Forward fellow Naomi Zeveloff…
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Israel Hopes to Lower Future Swap Cost
As Gilad Shalit settles back into life in Israel, the country resounds with an uncomfortable question: What happens next time? Israel started paying high prices for its captured soldiers in the 1980s, and since then, the prisoner-swap exchange rate has been subject to hyperinflation. In the Shalit deal it was 1,027 Palestinian prisoners to one…
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Musical Spoof “Pins and Needles” Presented at Time of Occupy Wall Street
1937 Musical Social Spoof “Pins and Needles” Presented at Time of Occupy Wall Street It was Saturday, October 15. I had just come out of the subway at 36th Street and Sixth Avenue, en route to M&J Trimming on 39th Street to buy some buttons. I was immediately swept up by a mass of chanting,…
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Howard Cosell Recalled: Icon and Irrritant
Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports By Mark Ribowsky W.W. Norton & Company, 496 pages, $29.95 ‘I’ve gotta use words when I talk to you,” Apeneck Sweeney says to his girlfriend, Doris, in T.S. Eliot’s “Sweeney Agonistes.” Sweeney had it right. Words transform reality by making it both more…
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Perfume ‘Nose’ Conjures Up Perfect Scents
In Egyptian times, Sophia Grojsman says, priests made a tincture of natural oils which they dabbed behind the ears of men and women to soothe their troubled souls. Thus, perfumery was born. “This is medicine for your mind and body,” Grojsman says. “That’s what perfume is.” During more than 30 years in the fragrance business,…
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Jews Vie for MVP Award in Two Leagues
The great slugging first baseman Hank Greenberg famously said, in the 1984 documentary film “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg,” ”There was always some leather lung yelling at me. I found it was a spur to make me do better because I could never fall asleep on the field. As soon as you struck…
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JCPA Delays Action on Campus Civil Rights
American Jewry’s primary umbrella group for addressing domestic concerns has backed off for now on trying to pass a controversial resolution warning Jewish organizations against using federal civil rights laws to “censor” perceived anti-Israel activities on campus. At its board meeting on October 24th, a task force of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs sent…
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Washington’s First Letter to Jews Is Lost
Just a little more than a year after George Washington became America’s first president, Levi Sheftall, a Jew from Savannah, wrote him a letter. Sheftall, president of Congregation Mickve Israel, congratulated Washington on behalf of his fellow Savannah Jews, who had high hopes for religious freedom in their new country. But as if to prove…
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Dad Says Ilan Grapel Is No Spy
In a conversation with Haaretz on Monday, the father of suspected Israeli spy Ilan Grapel said he hoped a deal between Israel and Egypt to secure his son’s release had in fact been signed, saying that he had not been given official word by Israeli officials. Earlier Monday, the Prime Minister’s Office indicated that Israel…
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