New presidents routinely suffer through hiccups, flubs and faux pas. Remember when Barack Obama mishandled the Henry Louis Gates arrest not long after his election? The president publicly charged a Cambridge, Massachusetts, cop who arrested the esteemed African-American historian for disorderly conduct w for acting “stupidly.” It may have been true, but Obama’s ill-advised comment…
Rabbi Ronald Greenwald, who worked to help free Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky and others, and served as President Richard Nixon’s liaison to the Jewish community, has died. Greenwald, of Monsey, New York, died Wednesday in his sleep while on vacation in Florida. He was 82. In helping to free Sharansky, Greenwald reportedly made 25 trips…
● Sammy Davis Jr.: A Personal Journey with My Father By Tracey Davis and Nina Bunche Pierce Running Press, 208 pages, $30 ‘Even when my own people would complain to me about racism,” Sammy Davis Jr. told his daughter shortly before the end of his life, “I would always say, ‘You got it easy. I’m…
If you’re lucky and smart, life as a newshound means that your day job consists of being a semi-ordinary person thrust into extraordinary circumstances. You invariably sidle up to history — and its makers — just by showing up for work. As a boy growing up in Hitler’s Berlin, Harry Rosenfeld, author of the new…
Scene from Gov. Christie’s morning staff meeting? The pivotal moment from the classic 1957 film “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” in which British prisoner-of-war officer Alec Guinness comes face to face with his obsessive and misguided attempt to build his legacy on a bridge. The parallel to the current moment isn’t entirely perfect, other…
Nelson Mandela with wife Winnie Mandela and Jewish comrade-in-arms Joe Slovo, May 1990 / Getty Images When I heard on Thursday afternoon about the death of Nelson Mandela at age 95, my mind was a jumble of complicated thoughts. I thought about the day I first learned about the South African freedom struggle, in the…
Although marred by unexplained omissions and bowdlerizations, the publication of “The Leonard Bernstein Letters” brought to mind a dinner I attended at Bernstein’s Fairfield, Conn., home around 30 years ago. Unlike the interviewer, Jonathan Cott, author of “Dinner With Lenny: The Last Long Interview With Leonard Bernstein,” I did not ask the maestro any portentous…
Leonard Garment, the special counsel to U.S. President Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal, has died, the New York Times reported on Monday. He was 89. Garment’s daughter, Ann Garment, confirmed the death to the newspaper. She said he died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. Garment, a Jewish lawyer and…
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