How do you pick the life-sized photograph to have engraved with a laser on your father’s headstone? Boris Shtern’s survivors chose a portrait of him with a moustache as thick as Groucho’s to go on his gravestone at Brooklyn’s Washington Cemetery. Yefiv Sheynin looks like a 1950s Vegas playboy in his portrait in granite. Boris…
If President Obama can get around to it, his second term is likely to focus on one more big legislative ambition: immigration reform. The outlines of such a reform effort are relatively unknown. Other than some kind of legal status for those here illegally, it’s not immediately clear what Obama would want to achieve, or…
Ellis Island, the historic point of arrival in the United States for more than 12 million European immigrants, has been closed since Hurricane Sandy hit New York Harbor on October 29, and the damage to its museum and other landmark structures will cost millions in repair expenses and lost income. The National Park Service, which…
Dozens of rightist activists and residents of south Tel Aviv’s Hatikva neighborhood gathered on Monday to protest against African migrants, after it was reported that an Eritrean man raped an elderly woman last week. The protesters were marching toward the area of Tel Aviv’s central bus station, where an 83-year-old woman was raped in the…
A new initiative, supported by prominent Holocaust and genocide scholars, calls on the international community to share responsibility for resolving the African refugee crisis in Israel, insisting that Israel should not be expected to carry the burden alone. Spearheading the initiative are two leading Holocaust historians – Professor Rafael Medoff, director of the David S….
Israel has stopped the unapproved influx of African migrants across its border with Egypt, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday after months of intensive counter-measures on the once porous desert frontier. More than 60,000 African migrants have walked into the Jewish state in recent years, some seeking work and others refuge. They have stirred…
Lately I’ve caught my parents exchanging a certain look — some kind of amused smile, a mixture of surprise and disbelief. Whenever I let slip a reference to an anecdote about Odessan Jews or to a Soviet comedy film or to a Pushkin fairy tale — whatever they fed me throughout my childhood — they…
Fear spread across Israel’s illegal immigrants from Sudan last summer. As the Forward reported, it has seemed in recent days like the Interior Ministry’s deadline was looming and they would soon be imprisoned. In August he announced plans to jail all Sudanese illegals without trial starting on October 15 and was expected to get underway…
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