Human rights are breaking out all over. (When they’re not being tamped down and trampled, that is.) What role does Judaism play? Earlier this week at Cardozo Law School in Manhattan, the topic of human rights and Judaism was explored in a panel discussion involving three top legal minds as well as a history professor….
When North Carolina’s largest city was named in February as the Democratic party’s choice for its presidential nominating convention in the late summer of 2012, Jews in the “Queen City” began giving some thought to their role. With a local Jewish community roughly the size of Obama’s slim margin of victory in North Carolina in…
Here’s a look at what else is going on in politics, culture and media. Wisconsin: A Jewish fight Some Jews in Wisconsin are joining the protests in Madison, fighting against Gov. Scott Walker’s plans to eliminate most collective-bargaining rights for public-sector employees, reported the Jewish Standard. And why shouldn’t they, wrote Laurie Zimmerman in JTA,…
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Its Conductor, Zubin Mehta, Bask in Bravos and Mazel Tovs The American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra concert, held February 22 at Carnegie Hall, was in celebration the 75th anniversary of the IPO and the 50th anniversary of Zubin Mehta as its lifetime conductor. So blown away was composer, pianist…
Shifting sands in the Middle East and new political realities in Washington are forcing J Street to recalibrate its strategy. The dovish Israel lobby, whose supporters gathered recently in Washington for its second national conference, had previously tried to provide political cover for President Obama as he pushed for a speedy resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian…
Think “Erin Brockovich” meets “Schindler’s List.” That’s the pitch for a new film in development by Sony Pictures that may star Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock. As improbable as it sounds, the movie will tell a suspenseful story about insurance companies and the Holocaust, an epic battle that led to one of the largest programs of…
Composer Elizabeth Swados has dramatized tragedy before, but never the fear that rises from the gut when flames are sweeping nearby and escape is far away. In creating the music for the most terrifying moments in an original oratorio for the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, Swados turned to raw instinct. “I didn’t…
The editor of the weekly Jewish newspaper of the nation’s capital has been fired following tensions with the paper’s new owners over coverage of the local Jewish federation. Debra Rubin was dismissed from Washington Jewish Week on February 23 and was told that the owners had decided to take the paper “in a different direction.”…
Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Israel’s first national poet, defined Zionism’s aspiration to make the Jews a normal people via statehood: “We will be a normal state only when we have the first Jewish prostitute, the first Hebrew thief, and the first Hebrew policeman.” But in the 21st century, it’s not enough to be a local thief;…
A long and sometimes ugly legal battle between the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its former employee Steve Rosen has ended with a victory for AIPAC. A Washington, D.C., Superior Court judge effectively threw out Rosen’s $20 million lawsuit against the pro-Israel lobby in which the former staffer alleged AIPAC had defamed him by…
In a cold and windswept Staten Island cemetery, four dozen people huddled together to recite Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, and to mark the 100th yahrzeit of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire’s victims. Twenty-two of the victims were laid to rest in 1911 at the Mount Richmond Cemetery, which is owned by the Hebrew Free Burial…
אַנאַ שטערנשיס האָט געזאַמלט הונדערטער בעל־פּהיִקע גבֿית־עדותן פֿון מענער און פֿרױען פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע סאָציאַלע שיכטן.
