In early 2005, porn producer and actor Ashley Gasper realized that someone was bootlegging his films. Counterfeit copies of “Jules Jordan’s Flesh Hunter 6” and “Jules Jordan: Feeding Frenzy 2,” among other titles, were showing up among the DVDs being returned to his distributor. According to a recent decision issued by the U.S. Court of…
When Richard Goldstone returned home to South Africa last May for his grandson’s bar mitzvah — an event that he was almost unable to paticipate in because of protests planned against him — he also attended a separate meeting whose details were kept secret until now. In the wake of Goldstone’s bombshell retraction of a…
After being a target for political attacks during the past year, progressive nongovernmental organizations in Israel are now bracing for another hit: the loss of one of their largest donors. The Ford Foundation, which has provided $40 million to civil society NGOs in Israel since 2003, will not resume its funding for programs in Israel…
The contending sides in Zia-ur-Rahman’s detention case are hardly a surprise. On Rahman’s behalf, the American Civil Liberties Union argues that the 27-year-old Afghan’s indefinite detention by American authorities — without right to counsel or judicial review — at Bagram airfield, outside Kabul, violates his right to due process. On the other side, the Pentagon,…
Like his life and his work, Juliano Mer-Khamis’s funeral procession cut across boundaries: It made its way from Haifa, crossing an Israeli army checkpoint to stop in the West Bank Palestinian town of Jenin and ended up at Kibbutz Ramot Menashe in northern Israel, where the slain filmmaker and actor was laid to rest and…
Jewish social justice guru Jill Jacobs is known for her vocal advocacy work on behalf of society’s most marginalized, including undocumented workers and the poor. Now, as newly appointed executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, she will engage with the most incendiary issue in American Jewish life: public criticism of Israel for its…
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’…
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…
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…
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…
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…
