JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
I first read the Joyce Antler’s book “The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America” as an undergraduate, deep in the thrall of Jewish feminist academia. It was an enormously important part of my uncovering and understanding what Antler calls “the cultural chain” of my identity as a Jewish woman activist. Joyce Antler is…
It’s Funny Girl redux. Or, at least, kind of. Jennifer Aniston has been transformed into Barbra Streisand for the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar. (See the pictures here.) Donning looks from Streisand classics like Funny Girl and What’s Up Doc?, Aniston does her best Babs impression, manicured nails and all. The article explains that Aniston…
ISRAEL’S NBA HOPE: Boston’s Jewish Advocate profiles Israeli basketball star Omri Casspi, who, it suggests, could be the next Israeli star to play in the NBA and is thus, as the paper awkwardly puts it in its headline, “The great white Israelite.” DEPT. OF FUNNY HEADLINES: Other headlines in this week’s Jewish Advocate include the…
BLAMING THE VICTIMS?: New York Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt writes about the recent resurfacing (first reported by JTA) of controversial spiritual leader/seeker and former rabbi Mordechai Gafni. Gafni, who has long been dogged by accusations of sexual misconduct, now seems to be affiliated with a non-Jewish New Age community in Utah, and he’s pointing…
ALL WE ARE SAYING, IS GIVE ISRAEL A CHANCE: Some Jewish activists are complaining that the city-sponsored Cambridge Peace Commission in Harvard University’s uber-liberal hometown is biased against Israel. Boston’s Jewish Advocate has the story. RABBINATE TUG-OF-WAR: New York Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt chats with Rabbi Benjamin Lau, a prominent religious Zionist who is…
FINKELSTEIN’S BROOKLYN EXILE: The New York Jewish Week catches up with Hezbollah-boosting ex-academic Norman Finkelstein, who, since losing his high-profile tenure battle at Chicago’s DePaul University, has been holed up in his late father’s Brooklyn apartment (that is, when he’s not visiting with his favorite Lebanese armed extremist group). But while the author of “The…
HAGEE THE ‘STALKING HORSE’: The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent’s Jonathan Tobin argues that critics of John Hagee are using the controversial pastor as “a stand-in for the smear that the tens of millions of Christian conservatives who love Israel are closeted Jew-haters.” FLIP-FLOP FOR FREE SPEECH: The proprietor of D.C. literary hub Politics and Prose is…
HAMPTONS ERUV HULLABALOO: A proposal to erect an eruv in tony Westhampton Beach, N.Y., has prompted an ugly backlash from some quarters. The New York Jewish Week has the story. HILLEL’S SUPER SAYING: Iron Man, Batman, Will Smith’s “Hancock,” Adam Sandler’s Zohan — this is the season of the “reluctant superhero,” Rabbi Simcha Weinstein writes…
