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Life Valentine’s Day and the Coolness Factor
Valentine’s Day is a holiday sometimes tinged with controversy along the secular-religious American Jewish divide. Many people are familiar with the conundrum: should we as Jews celebrate a holiday that has its roots in a Roman priest trying to celebrate Christianity in light of adversity? The holiday has also caused a lot of angst in…
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News Russian Jews Organize Against Iran
Sitting at the head of an expansive boardroom table at the luxury Setai hotel in Manhattan, Alexander Levin ponders the 300-square-foot room in Odessa, Ukraine, where he was raised. It is January 23, two days before Levin will address up to 600 guests at the United Nations in a ceremony organized by the Ukrainian and…
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Opinion The Losers in Russia’s Adoption Ban
I used to see them fairly often in airports, nicer hotels or restaurants. Living in Eastern Europe, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine and later working for a non-profit in Russia, I’d become adept at spotting other Americans in public. I sized them up, taking into account the color and style of their…
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News How Many Russian Speakers Are in U.S.?
They make up about 10% of the American Jewish community, but no one is entirely sure how many Russian-speaking Jews there are in the United States. At a recent conference at Harvard University, the answer fluctuated from as high as 750,000 people to fewer than 500,000, depending on which expert took the podium. Sam Kliger…
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Culture Is This Any Way to Name a Train Station?
Forward reader Eldad Ganin has sent me an excerpt from an English-language publication in the Ukrainian city of Lviv (better known by its Polish, Yiddish and Russian name of Lvov), along with a query. The excerpt reads: Why Central Trains Stations in Ukraine Are Called ‘Vokzal’ It is believed that the word vokzal originated from…
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Opinion The Cossacks Are on the Rise Again. For Real.
Time magazine has one of the scariest news reports I’ve read in a while. It seems the Cossacks are on the rise again. No, not figuratively — literally. The fanatically religious pan-Slavic paramilitary tribe that terrorized your great-grandmother’s great-grandmother in the old country is recruiting, operating youth training camps, running for office (successfully) in Russia…
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Books The Tragic Lives and Loves of Joyce’s Russian Translators
June 16 is Bloomsday, the day when Leopold Bloom, the Jewish-descended protagonist of James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses,” took his quasi-Homeric one-day odyssey through Dublin. It’s the day when Dubliners and Joyce’s fans throughout the world celebrate the legacy of the great Irish novelist, whose protagonist transcends all cultural and temporal borders while remaining both Irish…
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The Schmooze Russian Jews (Finally) Get Their Own Museum
They’ve largely disappeared as residents, but Russia’s Jews now have their own museum. Billed as the first Jewish museum in the country, the Moscow center opened recently following several years of planning. Exhibits are divided between two general themes, focusing on either Jewish practice or on Jewish history in Russia. Radio Free Europe reports that…
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Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
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Opinion Cultural boycotts of Israel just reached peak absurdity
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Opinion The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel
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Theater ‘Dirty Dancing’ be damned. A new musical shows another side of the Borscht Belt
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Trump says he plans to talk to Hezbollah amid Iran peace efforts
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Fast Forward American Jewish leaders across the political spectrum express alarm at Trump’s Iran deal
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News Can a liberal Zionist win with the pro-Palestinian movement? Brad Lander is trying.
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News For Iranian Jews who have been cheering Trump on, his new deal is hard to stomach