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Showing posts from June, 2006
Berl Lazar & Vladimir Zhirinovsky The Jewish side of the family By Yossi Melman It looks like an everyday scene in a cemetery. A man who is no longer young stands, mute and weeping, at his father's grave. This particular scene, however, was fraught with historic irony. The son is Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the deputy speaker of the Russian State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament) and the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, the third largest in the country. Zhirinovsky, an anti-Semitic nationalist, who has expressed esteem for Hitler, proposed that Russia offer asylum to Yasser Arafat and supported Saddam Hussein, found his father's grave in the Holon cemetery, outside Tel Aviv. Zhirinovskys quest for his roots- in the past he had denied that he had Jewish origins- ended, of all places in the world, in Israel. "For 60 years I have been looking for my father," he said on Sunday of this week, as we stood in Row 18, Bloc 27, Area 6 of the cemetery. It was
Where are we headed? Banned ===============> Piety blurs the female face in haredi catalogues Matthew Wagner, THE JERUSALEM POST Jun. 21, 2006 You can never be too pious when you are among the believers. Feldheim Publishers, a publishing house that caters to Orthodox Jews, discovered this when the English edition of the haredi newspaper Hamodia censored its book catalogue this weekend. Hamodia insisted that Feldheim blur female faces appearing on pictures of its book covers, including cartoon caricatures, before agreeing to distribute Feldheim's catalogue as a supplement in its weekend edition. Books published by Targum Press that appeared in the same catalogue were also blurred. Hamodia also removed two books from the catalogue, one dealing with female adolescence called The Wonder of Becoming You and another on dating called The Magic Touch. Feldheim and Targum censor themselves according to their own religious sensibilities. This apparently was not enough to meet Hamodia
The New Republic THE LESSONS OF THE ASHKENAZIM. Groups and Genes by Steven Pinker Post date: 06.17.06 Issue date: 06.26.06 My grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe who owned a small necktie factory on the outskirts of Montreal. While visiting them one weekend, I found my grandfather on the factory floor, cutting shapes out of irregular stacks of cloth with a fabric saw. He explained that by carving up the remnants that were left over when the neckties had been cut out and stitching them together in places that didn't show, he could get a few extra ties out of each sheet of cloth. I asked him why he was doing this himself rather than leaving it to his employees. He shrugged, tapped his forehead, and said, "Goyishe kop," a term of condescension that literally means "gentile head." He wasn't exactly serious, but he wasn't exactly not serious either. Jews have long had an ambivalent attitude toward their own intelligence, and toward their reputati
Las Vegas Weekly -: Sandy Weill one of the Scariest White Men in America THE 13 SCARIEST WHITE GUYS IN AMERICA From Cheney-Bush to Roger Clemens, these guys freeze the blood of honest men By Don Hazen The 13 Scariest White Guys in America The bully is back in American politics. Intimidation, dismissal of majority opinion, denial of scientific facts and aggressive scapegoating--these tactics have once again taken center stage. Blatant propaganda feeds fear and distrust, and the powerful and the privileged wallow in the spoils. Though it never quite disappeared, the mean guy persona took a back seat in the Clinton era. Clinton's oft-repeated "I feel your pain" obscured some hard-hearted policies, like welfare reform and the relentless drug war. But the Clinton style was one of subtle triangulation, not public muscle. Clinton took enough principled stands to make him hugely popular in the African-American community and to reassure many that the barbarians had not yet reached
Tachrichim don't have pockets The Times of London June 20, 2006 Weill to give $1.4bn in 'deal with God' By Jenny Davey SANDY WEILL, the former high-flying Citigroup chairman who was renowned for his love of private jets, has pledged to give away his estimated $1.4 billion ($760 million) personal fortune as part of a “deal with God”. The 73-year-old, who rose from humble origins in Brooklyn to become one of the most successful executives of his era, says that he will spend his retirement disposing of his fortune to charity. In an interview with Citigroup Pursuits, a magazine for the American bank’s private clients, he said: “Hopefully we’ll be as smart in how we give our money away as we turned out to be smart in making it.” On the decision to give his fortune away, he said: “That’s the deal I’ve made with God. I hope that he gives us the time.” He added that his autobiography would emphasise philanthropy as much as business and quoted his wife, Joanie, as saying: “Shrouds d
LAWRENCE A TOWN DIVIDED A clash of cultures in the Five Towns As Orthodox Jews flock to South Shore enclave, other Jewish denominations in the community are uneasy about their impact BY CAROL EISENBERG Newsday Staff Writer June 11, 2006 In the Five Towns these days, how you feel about life in this predominantly Jewish area of the South Shore often depends on which religious group you belong to. Lisa Gray, a member of a Reform Jewish congregation, describes being awakened by honking horns as late as midnight as Orthodox Jewish worshipers leave the recently built yeshiva across the street - and again at 8 a.m. Sunday when school resumes. On Fridays, she steers clear of Central Avenue, the main shopping strip, because drivers double-park for last-minute purchases before the start of the Jewish Sabbath. On Saturdays, she dreads driving through streets clogged with walkers, sometimes 10 abreast, en route to the shteeble, or small synagogue, that opened two blocks away in what had been a pri
Atlantic Monthly . Leaps of Faith When pop stars get religion by Ross Douthat ..... In the year since Michael Jackson’s acquittal on charges of child molestation, the reclusive singer has abandoned Neverland Ranch for Bahrain, where he’s been a guest of the royal family. Jackson recently promised to build a mosque in the tiny kingdom, and he was spotted in a Bahraini mall wearing a flowing abaya robe, traditionally the garb of Muslim women. In March, CBS News reported that the King of Pop, raised a Jehovah’s Witness, might soon convert to Islam. Below is a selection of famous entertainers who changed faiths in midcareer, along with a few details on how well each conversion took. 1. Sammy Davis Jr. (Judaism) This Rat Packer was born to Christian parents, but didn’t practice a faith until he lost his eye in a 1954 car crash. While recovering, Davis found himself poring over a history of Judaism. His eventual conversion prompted giggles and suspicion among Jews and Gentiles alike. But tho
Sons of the The Father After the Satmar Grand Rebbe's Death, a Tzimmes Grows in Brooklyn By Michael Powell Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 4, 2006; D01 NEW YORK "There he goes! There he goes! Follow him!" We bounce, five ultra-Orthodox Jewish Satmars and me, through Williamsburg in a white SUV late one Sunday night in hot pursuit of Moses Friedman, the white-bearded gabbai (royal adviser) to Rebbe Zalmen. The gabbai drives his Cadillac down a tenement canyon. We tailgate him, fishtailing around corners, braking, accelerating. The gabbai stops and squints at us in his rearview mirror. The five Satmars, who are followers of Rebbe Aaron, who happens to be Zalmen's brother and rival, go motionless. A minute passes and the gabbai's Cadillac slips off into the night. Giggles fill the SUV. There was no point to this pursuit, other than messing with the gabbai's mind. Now they've got a new idea. "Here! Listen to this!" A young Satmar, his payes