For those who know him, it was no surprise when freshman Rep. Michael Grimm broke ranks with his party and became the first House Republican to call for the release of Jonathan Pollard. The freshman member from New York has made Israel a key element of his political work. And while the Republican House leadership…
Inside the student center, the tables were set with all of the Passover staples: bitter herbs, haroset, parsley sprigs and salt water, a Haggadah at each place setting. By 6:15 on a recent Friday evening, the hall had filled up with college and graduate students, alumni, faculty and a smattering of “townies” — more than…
On a recent Wednesday night in New York City, Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization that critics label anti-Israel, made the case for her group’s main protest tactic: a targeted campaign of boycott, divestment and sanction — or BDS, as it has become known — against Israel’s occupation of the…
Making Seder for the extended family seems like child’s play compared with Rabbi Yehudah Glick’s Passover preparations. The New York-born Glick is getting ready to lead world Jewry in a Paschal sacrifice April 18, the first night of Passover. According to the Torah, the Children of Israel were commanded “in perpetuity” to sacrifice a young…
An annual report by the U.S. Department of State on human rights in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza paints a stark picture of human rights conditions among minority populations in Israel, and Palestinian populations in the West Bank and Gaza. “Principal human rights problems were institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against Arab citizens, Palestinian…
APPRECIATION Just after Sidney Lumet passed away, I received numerous e-mails from film students who fondly recalled his visits with them at Columbia University. A few remembered the emotional wallop of seeing “The Pawnbroker” for the first time, in my American film history course. Others praised Lumet’s humility and candor after a preview of “Night…
It’s a constant worry to most environmentalists. A plastic bottle discarded today is likely to be intact in a landfill hundreds of years from now. But for Haifa-based industrial designer Hadas Itzcovitch, the durability of those bottles has a silver lining. Itzcovitch, 30, is pioneering the bottles’ use in long-lasting and weatherproof outdoor art, and…
As we make plans to celebrate Earth Day 2011, we worry about radiation from a crippled nuclear plant in Japan. We face air pollution, species extinction, climate change. Major fish stocks are down 90%. And, more parochially, the Jewish community faces extraordinary stress and uncertainty. The federation system and many of our synagogues have lost…
Facing tensions that have erupted over community funded artistic expression relating to Israel, the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is carving out a middle road that it hopes will please all sides. Despite being urged by some community members to stop funding plays critical of Israel in the local Jewish Community Center, the federation’s board…
Updated: April, 18, 2011, 1:28 p.m. WASHINGTON — It is a classic good news-bad news story. The Palestinian economy is booming and for the first time is being acknowledged as strong enough to support an independent state. That is the good part. The negative side of this news, which comes from the April 13 meeting…
When the Belfast Hebrew Congregation commissioned its new synagogue in 1964, it chose a circular building held up by concrete beams marked out in the shape of a Star of David. Tall, narrow windows and triangular peepholes allowed shafts of lights to penetrate the space. Today, a thin wall cuts across the center of the…
