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News Cleveland Rocks — Not Really
They say geography is destiny. The hills of Greece, according to some historians, encouraged the locals to carve them into city-states. England, “bound in with the triumphant sea,” as Shakespeare put it, inherited the oceans. The Jews were born to a desert land besieged by mortal enemies and afflicted with drought and famine, and then…
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News Sweating in the Cleveland Schvitz
At first, when your father-in-law tells you he is taking you to the schvitz, you are not quite sure you heard him correctly. “The what?” you say. “The schvitz!” he repeats. “What’s a schvitz?” you ask. “A schvitz is a schvitz!” he says, as if the meaning of the word were contained, matryoshka doll-like, inside…
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News Presidents Conference, Israel Apartheid Week
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis talks with Forward Washington correspondent Nathan Guttman about the odd collection of groups that make up the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Then, with Israel Apartheid Week in full swing, Forward fellow Naomi Zeveloff and David A.M. Wilensky, editor of New Voices, stop by to…
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News Double Trauma for ‘Hidden Children’
Among adoptees for whom the discovery of a Jewish past is most wrenching are the “hidden children” — those who survived the Holocaust by posing as Christians. In 1939, approximately 1.6 million Jewish children lived in areas that would be occupied by Nazi Germany and its allies. Although scholars differ on the numbers, it seems…
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News Raised Christian, But Jewish by Birth
Elisabeth Tinkham, 41, was raised as a Protestant by her adoptive parents, but always felt a connection to Judaism. Her most vivid childhood memory of the United Church of Christ involves a Passover Seder, which a rabbi demonstrated for the congregation. “I really liked the symbolism of the foods,” she said. “And when the rabbi…
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Life Why Are We Afraid of Being Too Religious?
Recently, I have been thinking a lot about what makes some people uncomfortable with varying degrees of belief within their own religion. Certainly even within the Russian-Jewish community, there are misunderstandings about what Jews of a stronger religious lifestyle represent. I wanted to know what creates a divide between being Jewish by blood and stringently…
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Culture Jewish Creator of Modern German Police
As World War I neared its end, Germany turned its focus to internal security. Serious unrest in Berlin during the summer of 1918 led the Prussian Ministry of the Interior to make a surprising decision. Bernhard Weiss, a little-known Jewish war hero and recipient of the Iron Cross First Class, was ordered to leave the…
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Life Iran Must Be Taken Seriously
The past few weeks have been filled with events that pushed the limits of diplomacy with the Islamic Republic of Iran, including attacks on Israeli diplomats in Georgia, India and Thailand. No one was killed in any of the attacks, but the secretive operations point to the tension between Iran and Israel. Another bomb plot…
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