Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to reassure Diaspora Jewish leaders that redesign plans remain on track for the Western Wall plaza that will allow greater scope there for non-Orthodox prayer services. In a June 27 meeting with Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism and with Natan Sharansky, head of the…
I first met Natan Sharansky in June 1988 at The American Booksellers Association (ABA) Convention in Anaheim, California. Released two years earlier from Soviet imprisonment, Sharansky was among a literary lineup that included Barry Goldwater, Ray Bradbury, Studs Terkel, and Shirley Temple Black. His autobiography, “Fear No Evil” was a sensation. At a private reception…
There is no shortage of people willing to take a credit for the Soviet Jewry movement. Take it from me. I know this to be true. While on tour with my book, I don’t remember a single reading where someone in the audience didn’t chew me out about why their Uncle Murray wasn’t included in…
I really must avoid spicy foods — even my wife’s scrumptious jalapeno pepper-laced cornbread — before retiring at night. The recipe’s great, but for someone approaching 60, it’s also a recipe for indigestion-fueled nightmares. The scene of my latest bad dream: the Kotel, or Western Wall, in Jerusalem. The time: some future point, may it…
Israel on Monday cancelled a visit by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to Jerusalem’s Old City, saying the Palestinians had sought to politicise a conservation mission. No one was immediately available for comment at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters. A month ago, it announced it would send experts to Jerusalem in mid-May to…
Many Israelis marked the 46th anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification, as they see it, with the fanfare that has become a staple of Jerusalem Day, the holiday first declared by the government in 1968 to mark the historic event. The May 8 celebration, which Israel’s chief rabbinate has also declared a religious holiday, was punctuated by…
Thousands of girls from ultra-Orthodox seminaries in Jerusalem are expected to protest at the Western Wall on Friday, in response to a court ruling permitting the Women of the Wall prayer group to hold non-Orthodox services in the central plaza of the holy site. Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, the head of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community,…
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the demise of a bold plan to provide equal space for egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem are greatly exaggerated. But that doesn’t mean they may not become true. Which is why it is so important that American Jews find every bit of common ground they can…
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