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Blood and Boils and Beasts, Oh My!
We’ve been at the Passover Seder of our friends Helen and Tanny for each of the past dozen years. In addition to being full of good fellowship, spirited singing and delectable food, the Seders feature props illustrating the 10 Plagues that are so startling that, some years, my youngest child runs out of our hosts’…
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An Orthodox Jew Leads Toledo to a Women’s National Basketball Title
Naama Shafir, a junior guard, poured in a career-high 40 points to lead the University of Toledo to victory in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament championship. She was crowned the basketball tournament’s MVP. And then she walked about two miles home. Shafir, an Orthodox Jew from Israel, did not want to break the Sabbath. The…
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David Bezmozgis on Living in Limbo
David Bezmozgis’s first novel and follow-up to his much-acclaimed 2004 short story collection, “Natasha,” is about a family in limbo, caught between the world they have left and the “Free World,” of the book’s title, to which they are headed. They are the Krasnanskys, Soviet Jews, who like Bezmozgis and his family, left the Soviet…
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In Israeli Hospitals, Laughter Is Good Medicine
Some may view it as a double life: By night, she works in the most stereotypical of Orthodox women’s professions; by day, she’s a clown. After dark, Freda Kaplan, a rebbetzin and wife of Dov Kaplan, chief rabbi of Israel’s Caesarea, heads to a local ritual bath, where she is the mikveh lady, supervising women…
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Pizzarelle: Rome’s Matzo Fritter
Two years ago, I fell head over heels for a matzo fritter. My husband and I were celebrating our first anniversary in Rome, and through a series of lucky coincidences we landed an invitation to an event hosted by Giovanni Terracina, owner of Le Bon Ton Catering. An upscale kosher catering company in Rome, Le…
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Jewish Nursing Home Association’s Jewish Values Face Test When New CEO Falls Ill
Marla Gilson is a well-known face in Jewish advocacy circles. A long time head of Hadassah’s Washington office and an alumna of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the federation system, Gilson was recruited last June to head the Association of Jewish Aging Services (AJAS), an umbrella organization for 110 Jewish nursing homes and…
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Ed Koch, Unabridged
NEWS ITEM: New York City’s Queensboro Bridge has been renamed the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, in honor of the former mayor. The renaming was accomplished despite fierce opposition from some politicians. His enemies’ ire has risen a notch, They’re angered the bridge has been named for Ed Koch. “So how am I doin’?” he answers,…
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Reporters’ Roundtable: Advancing Human Rights; Syrian Jewish Scandal; Kabbalah Center in the News
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis speaks with staff writer Gal Beckerman about a new human rights organization that is being launched by Robert Bernstein, the Human Rights Watch founder who split with that organization last year — thanks, in part, to what he sees as the group’s disproportionate scrutiny of open societies like…
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Cal Irvine Students Met with Hamas Leader
Students from the University of California, Irvine met with a Hamas leader during a student trip to Israel. The Institute for Jewish and Community Research said it learned recently that the university’s branch of the Olive Tree Initiative, an Israeli-Palestinian peace organization, arranged for a meeting between the Irvine students and a Hamas leader in…
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Learning Her Mother’s Legacy
In September 1909, Clara Lemlich, a young woman from Ukraine, stood up in front of a crowded auditorium in New York City’s Cooper Union. After listening to lengthy speeches by union leaders who urged caution, Lemlich said that the poor pay and unsafe working conditions could go on no longer, and she called for a…
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HRW Founder Charts Another Way To Probe Human Rights
When Robert Bernstein, founder of Human Rights Watch, publicly split last year from the groundbreaking organization he birthed in the late 1970s, most people assumed this was the last they would hear from the 88-year-old publisher-turned-activist. But Bernstein was not finished. It appears that The New York Times op-ed in which he charged HRW with…
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