What do we know about the tornado that hit the Oklahoma City suburbs on Monday? And what can we learn from it? Specifically, how bad was it? How does it compare with other tornadoes? And was it related to climate change, as Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Barbara Boxer are charging? For starters, the tornado…
Jewish groups are joining the effort to help those displaced by the tornado in suburban Oklahoma City. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, announced Tuesday that his organization will collect donations and distribute them to the American Red Cross and others on the ground in Oklahoma. “We are numb with grief,…
I was sitting in a restaurant, having lunch with my family in Macon, Ga., when my great-uncle Herbert, a genealogist by hobby, proceeded to retell our family history. I had heard it many times before, but this time there was a twist. I had always thought that everyone on both sides of my family was…
A Florida state bill targeting a supposed threat from Islamic law may instead end up preventing Orthodox couples from using Jewish religious courts, or batei din, to arbitrate their divorces, according to legal specialists and some Jewish groups. The Application of Foreign Law in Certain Cases bill is considered likely to pass the Senate before…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Like so many Americans, I was not quite sure how to mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Listening to Barber’s Adagio for Strings was one option; attending to the Times’ commemorative edition was another and watching television coverage of the day’s events was a third. But none of these…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Much has been written of late about the ways in which celebrated American musicals such as “Oklahoma” or “South Pacific” carry considerable Jewish freight. While most audiences come away humming rather than thinking, the American musical, many scholars suggest, is actually where American Jewish playwrights, lyricists, choreographers and designers…
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