The Jewish Week back issues from December 2006:
City Urges Halt To Ritual Practice
Dec 16, 2006; ... Cohen, Debra Nussbaum, Cohler-Esses, Larry The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Unprecedented open letter says controversial circumcision technique is dangerous; haredim say they won't heed warning. In the face of a religious court's failure to conclude its investigation of a ...
'Munich' Refuels Debate Over Moral Equivalency
Dec 16, 2006; ... Ain, Stewart The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Jewish leaders, cultural critics see Spielberg film on reprisal killings as misrepresenting reality. In one cinematic swoop, Steven Spielberg's movie "Munich" has rekindled the fierce debate about moral equivalency -- the notion ...
Likud: No Direction Home
Dec 16, 2006; ... Mitnick, Joshua The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 'People are in mourning,' as party searches for new message. TEL AVIV -- In a convention center cafeteria thick with smoke, they backslapped, clasped hands and gave bear hugs. But most of all they consoled one another. In ...
Point-Blank Attack On $10M Rite
Dec 16, 2006; ... Ain, Stewart The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 What began as gossip columnist fodder -- a bat mitzvah on two floors of the Rainbow Room costing a reported $10 million and featuring such artists as Aerosmith, Tom Petty and the rapper 50 Cent -- has moved from the tabloid press to ...
To The Publishing House
Dec 16, 2006; ... Lipman, Steve The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Ruth Gruber, author of 17 books, many with a Jewish theme, knows that it takes a long time for even veteran writers to have a book published in this country. It took 70 years for her 18th to appear here. "Virginia Woolf: ...
A White House Chanukah
Dec 16, 2006; ... Birkner, Gabrielle The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 It has been more than two months since President George W. Bush traveled to New Orleans. But last week, two Jewish leaders from the hurricane-ravaged city -- Paige Nathan, the executive director of New Orleans Hillel at Tulane ...
Subterranean Revolutionary Blues
Dec 16, 2006; ... Leibovitz, Liel The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Until he was 3, Zayd Dohrn was living what he now wryly refers to as "a very strange life." His parents, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, were on the FBI's Most Wanted list for their role in The Weather Underground, a radical and ...
Bolton's Boldness
Dec 16, 2006 ... The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Whatever one's opinion about the appropriateness of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, he has been a breath of fresh air when it comes to Israel, speaking out forcefully and bluntly in support of the Jewish state in its fight to ...
Between the Lines; This Year's Jewish Buzzwords
Dec 16, 2006; ... Rosenblatt, Gary The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 I received a call last week from an official of a major Jewish philanthropy seeking suggestions for an expert on peoplehood to speak to her group. I told her I wasn't sure what peoplehood meant, especially in terms of finding an ...
No 'War On Christmas'
Dec 16, 2006 ... The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Here's a shocking revelation: Most Jews aren't mortally offended by the White House Christmas tree. Most of us don't run for cover when we hear "Silent Night" on the radio. And the crche on our neighbor's lawn doesn't send us scurrying to find the ...
Bolton Pledges To 'Change The Culture' Of The U.N.
Dec 16, 2006; ... Rosenblatt, Gary The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Bias against Israel persists, U.S. ambassador tells ZOA. It's easy to see why John Bolton, the controversial U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was the honoree at the annual Zionist Organization of America dinner Sunday ...
Touro Students Fighting Web Limits
Dec 16, 2006; ... Dickter, Adam The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Some say they can go outside filter system set up at Queens dorm to block out 'distractions.' Upset about what they view as excessive restriction of Internet use at a Queens campus of Touro College, some students are bypassing a ...
Tuning Out Terror
Dec 16, 2006; ... Mark, Jonathan The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Florida professor's trial and acquittal generated little national coverage despite its consequences. Perhaps no one since Adolph Eichmann has been charged with complicity in more Jewish murders than Sami Al-Arian, the Florida ...
Struggling For An Audience
Dec 16, 2006; ... Merwin, Ted The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Despite Yiddish boomlet these days, Folksbiene theater still faces uphill battle. Every weekend through the end of December, in the basement theater of the JCC in Manhattan, a lost Jewish chicken named Hindele ...
YU Launches Center For Jewish Future
Dec 16, 2006; ... Birkner, Gabrielle The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Ambitious but fuzzy think tank seen as effort to stem rightward shift. In what is widely seen as an effort to reclaim its centrist base amid Orthodoxy's continued move to the right, Yeshiva University has opened the Center ...
What Is Conservative Judaism?
Dec 16, 2006; ... Wolpe, David The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 In early November I spoke at the Jewish Theological Seminary on "The Future of Conservative Judaism." I prepared for the talk by asking colleagues, friends and congregants to define Conservative Judaism in one sentence. It was a ...
Marketing The Miracle
Dec 16, 2006; ... Hammerman, Joshua The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 A few weeks ago I was preparing a handout for Shabbat services, focusing on the interrelated themes of healing and friendship. It occurred to me that with "Rent" due to open the next weekend, with its themes of healing ...
Bush Is Imposing Fundamentalist Agenda
Dec 16, 2006; ... Snyder, Phyllis The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Senior officials of the Food and Drug Administration decided recently, in advance of any scientific study, to bar over-the-counter distribution of emergency contraceptive medication. This is bad news for those of us who believe in ...
The Searcher
Dec 16, 2006; ... Leibovitz, Liel The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 David Levithan is writing about the one thing teens care about the most: the search for identity. In October, David Levithan, a rising star in young-adult literary fiction, found himself in a peculiar situation. He was invited ...
Mission Of His Soul
Dec 16, 2006; ... Rosenblatt, Gary The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 'The Best Of Peter Himmelman' offers glimpses of the singer's Jewish commitment. Peter Himmelman is as private about his religious beliefs as he is deeply committed to them. When the singer and songwriter, whose new CD ...
Singing Out For God
Dec 16, 2006; ... Robinson, George The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 His very name tells you what he does. Yitzchok Helfgott "helps God." He does it with a glorious singing voice that allows him to serve God for his own spiritual growth and, to his enormous satisfaction, to help others find ...
The Spirit Of Stowe
Dec 16, 2006; ... Levenson, Gabe The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Gaze upon the parochet at the new $1.2 million Jewish Community Center of Greater Stowe and you might picture "a typical Vermont sunrise." That's what Roselle Abramowitz, a member of the congregation there, calls the pure silk ...
Jacob's Rugged Road
Dec 16, 2006; ... Gillman, Neil The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 The most accurate commentary on the events in Jacob's life recounted in this week's Torah portion, Vayishlach, is the Midrash on the very first word of next week's portion, Vayeshev, the portion that begins the ...
Don't Know Much About (Jewish) History
Dec 16, 2006; ... Chabin, Michele The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Israel tries to shore up secular kids' appreciation of classical Judaism. JERUSALEM -- Yossi may be able to read, but he can't chant. And that's worrying top Israeli leaders, who say this generation's knowledge of ...
PA Plunged Into Chaos
Dec 16, 2006; ... Ain, Stewart The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Fatah divisions erupt, threaten to delay January election. Rival factions of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party shot it out with each other this week in the Gaza Strip over who should represent the party in January's ...
Blending The Urban And Suburban
Dec 16, 2006; ... Larson, Hilary The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 Consistently ranked one of the nation's most expensive places to live, the city of Stamford, Conn., is well worth the money to those who live there. And there is good news for the non-millionaires eager to live in one ...
The Latkes That Bind
Dec 16, 2006; ... Wiener, Julie The Jewish Week 12-16-2006 When I was a small child in Houston, my mother would come to school every year to teach about Chanukah. Armed with her guitar, wax-encrusted menorah, dreidels and box of latkes mix, my mother -- laying her New York accent on a ...
City Challenged On Ritual Practice
Dec 23, 2006; ... Cohen, Debra Nussbaum The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Two pediatricians treating haredim say health commissioner hasn't made case against circumcision technique. Rebuking the city's health commissioner, two pediatricians with longtime practices in fervently Orthodox ...
In Sickness And In Health?
Dec 23, 2006; ... Ain, Stewart, Mitnick, Joshua The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Sharon's stroke tests Kadima's viability. Although his Labor Party opponents insisted this week they would not make an issue of Ariel Sharon's health as he campaigns for re-election in March, the minor stroke that ...
Gawker Frums Out?
Dec 23, 2006; ... Birkner, Gabrielle The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 "Who is this Hashem guy, anyway?" Andrew Krucoff jokingly asked. When Krucoff, a scribe for the popular gossip Web log, Gawker, arrived in Israel three weeks ago, he knew that Hashem was an alias for God but, admittedly, not ...
Nixing Kris Kringle Kugel
Dec 23, 2006; ... Birkner, Gabrielle The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Ever since Seth Cohen first donned his Santa Claus-style kipa two years ago on Fox's hip, hit drama "The O.C.," christening the Chrismukkah holiday, there has been much ado over fusion of Christmas and Chanukah traditions. It has ...
At 82, A Career Illuminated
Dec 23, 2006; ... Ruby, Walter The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Boris Leskin vividly remembers the moment during the late 1970s when he realized he could no longer play the double game involved in being a creative artist in Soviet society. Today, an 82-year-old actor living in New York, who played ...
Needed: Birthright Israel For Adults
Dec 23, 2006 ... The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Among the more intriguing statistics gleaned from the 2005 American Jewish Committee survey of American Jewish opinion released this week is that 49 percent of those who have never been to Israel list "travel costs" as the primary reason. (Twenty ...
Between the Lines; The Jewish Person Of The Year
Dec 23, 2006; ... Rosenblatt, Gary The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 The Person of the Year 2005 in Jewish life is Ariel Sharon, hands down. Even before the mild stroke he suffered this week brought new attention to the key role he plays in Israeli life, Sharon's importance was obvious. Whether ...
Intensive Care
Dec 23, 2006 ... The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 The mild stroke that Ariel Sharon suffered this week was a warning signal not only for his personal health, but for the health of the Israeli political system. Fortunately, the Israeli prime minister's physical recovery is expected to be complete, ...
Burglars Plaguing Brooklyn Shul
Dec 23, 2006; ... Dickter, Adam The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Repeated break-ins force dwindling congregation to upgrade security. Bernie Lazar dreads answering his phone these days if it rings in the morning. The president of Bnai Zion of Midwood fears it will be news of ...
Student Activism Moves From Rallies To Journals
Dec 23, 2006; ... Rosenblatt, Gary The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Israeli think tank funding North American campus publications dealing with Jewish life. Last year, Bari Weiss was one of a small group of student activists on the Columbia University campus protesting the alleged anti-Israel ...
Solidarity On Stage
Dec 23, 2006; ... Dickter, Adam The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Yeshivah of Flatbush students join with program for disabled in Chanukah play written to boost spirits of West Bank communities. When Yeshivah of Flatbush High School students take the stage on Dec. 28 to perform "Noah! Ride The ...
Munich Terror, Up Close
Dec 23, 2006; ... Ain, Stewart The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 A teenaged Sean McManus sat in a TV control room for 16 hours while his father, sportscaster Jim McKay, told the world about tragedy unfolding at '72 Olympics. For Sean McManus, the Munich Massacre in 1972, strikingly re-created ...
In The Footsteps of Rev. King
Dec 23, 2006; ... Rosenberg, Merri The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Greenburgh temple's 'Civil Rights Journey' to the South offers area teens insights into history. White Plains -- Andrea Zlotowitz never realized there was more to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech than ...
'Victory For Science, Victory For Religion'
Dec 23, 2006; ... Ain, Stewart The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Rebuke to intelligent design hailed by much of Jewish community. The decision of a federal judge Tuesday to bar a Pennsylvania school district from teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology classes has ...
Birthright Israel Needs Your Help
Dec 23, 2006; ... Bronfman, Charles R., Steinhardt, Michael H. The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 As Taglit-birthright israel completes its sixth year, edging close to 100,000 total participants thus far, it is no exaggeration to say that the program has ushered in a revolution in Jewish life. Despite ...
Why Hamas Should Be Allowed To Run
Dec 23, 2006; ... Eliach, Yotav The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Israel yearns for peace, deserves peace and has taken serious risks to try to achieve peace. But that has not translated into Israelis having the peace they crave. No sovereign state, and certainly not Israel, can base its foreign ...
Dreidel Is More Than A Toy
Dec 23, 2006; ... Hirschfield, Brad The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Kids have played with dreidels on Chanukah for centuries, but these days dreidels are not just for children. In fact, playing dreidel on Chanukah has become so popular that we now have public events including the largest number of ...
Spielberg Loses His Rhythm
Dec 23, 2006; ... Robinson, George The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Too long and lacking a political punch, 'Munich' doesn't live up to the hype. Apart from the edifying spectacle of people passing judgment on the alleged bias of a film they admit they haven't seen, and the inevitable parade ...
Love In The Time Of Psychoanalysis
Dec 23, 2006; ... Robinson, George The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 In recent years, the border between documentary film and fiction has become more like a semi-permeable membrane. In the hands of Chris Marker or Ross McElwee, to name two of the most expert practitioners, the result has been the ...
The Great Bruts
Dec 23, 2006; ... Kronemer, Gamliel The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Six kosher sparklers for any occasion. Over the last 60 years, Western Europe has been moving towards greater political, economic, and cultural cohesion. Yet in spite of this ever closer unity, new disputes seem to constantly ...
Light On The Gold Coast
Dec 23, 2006; ... Sellner, Judith Broder The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Menorahs with an Upper East Side elegance, and price tag. The Chanukah menorah, according to Encyclopedia Judaica, likely had its origin in a "simple, pear-shaped Greco-Roman clay lamp, with an aperture for the wick and ...
Toy Story
Dec 23, 2006; ... Sellner, Judith Broder The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Let's face it, kids' gifts are Chanukah's main attractions -- and this year, there are lots to choose from. When the Macabees resisted and defeated Antiochus and his armies, they did it so that they could raise their ...
Maccabee Music
Dec 23, 2006; ... Robinson, George The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 With parodies, swing and even post-punk offerings, this year's batch of Chanukah CDs go well beyond the traditional tunes. The Chanukah CDs are starting to arrive, adding a wintry glow to the backlog of recordings already lying ...
The Festival Of Lights, Transformed
Dec 23, 2006; ... Brawarsky, Sandee The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 A radio show, a public debate and a family manuscript all turned into books on the holiday. Re-gifting -- the process of recycling things received -- gets a positive literary spin this Chanukah. Here are three new books that ...
Double Dipping
Dec 23, 2006; ... Leibovitz, Liel The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 A cunning Chanukah-Christmas culinary combination. 'Twas the week before Chanukah, when all through the town / noshers' tummies were rumbling with terrible sounds. / They drooled at the thought of a latke fresh fried / with a ...
Bibi, Ascendant
Dec 23, 2006; ... Leibovitz, Liel The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Netanyahu, back from the political wilderness, prays for Sharon's health and wins the Likud primary. JERUSALEM -- Into the humdrum of the Western Wall -- praying men in long black coats, beggars asking for a small donation and ...
Wink And A Nod On Palestinian Vote?
Dec 23, 2006; ... Ain, Stewart The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Israel, PA seen in tandem to head off strong Hamas showing. Concern by the West that Hamas would capture a sizeable number of seats in the Jan. 25 Palestinian parliamentary election -- thereby jeopardizing foreign aid to the ...
Hamas Power Rising At The Polls
Dec 23, 2006; ... Mitnick, Joshua The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Success in municipal elections and Fatah infighting spur concerns of a strong showing in parliamentary vote. BAZARIYEH, WEST BANK -- The fanfare of the Hamas election campaign came to this tiny hamlet perched on a mountain high ...
Jewry South Of The Border
Dec 23, 2006; ... Miller, Deb The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 Sitting in the courtyard of El Instituto Cultural Mexico-Israel, a freshly squeezed orange juice in hand procured from one of the juice stands that proliferate on the corners of Mexico City, I wait for my guide and the group with whom I ...
The Problem With Peace
Dec 23, 2006; ... Riskin, Shlomo The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 One of the most inane messages printed on the casual shirts worn by many of our high-school students is "Don't worry, be happy." Perhaps these words reflect the desire of a grazing cow, but they certainly ought not serve as the wish ...
Frumster's Extreme Makeover?
Dec 23, 2006; ... Kustanowitz, Esther D. The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 "Unaffiliated." "Secular." "Synagogue=Never." With many JDate members describing themselves with this level of observance, daters who wanted to create a Jewish future with their bashert were for a long time simply out of ...
The Silverman Effect
Dec 23, 2006; ... Schifrin, Daniel The Jewish Week 12-23-2006 The day after Richard Pryor died, longing to be transported comedically, I went to see Sarah Silverman's concert film "Jesus is Magic." I expected to be entertained, nothing more. Instead I was overwhelmed, not just by ...