Washington Jewish Week back issues from March 2008:
Culinary intermarriage
Mar 06, 2008; ... When carnivores marry vegetarians, meat's rare Leon seemann is known to enjoy a succulent steak or a tasty hamburger. But the Potomac resident can satisfy his carnivorous cravings only outside his home, for his wife, Robyn, 32, a committed vegetarian, has banned meat from the family ...
Lessons of a Lifetime
Mar 06, 2008; ... Teens trained to help elderly with ethical wills Mary Kligman didn't know what an ethical will was when she was first approached about creating one. And she doesn't recall being all that enthusiastic about it. But now, not only has the 94-year-old Hebrew Home resident completed ...
Mishmash
Mar 06, 2008; ... It's a music player, it's a camera, it's a ... We thought it was cool when cell phones could also be used as cameras. An Israeli company is doing way better than that. Modu has created a cell phone that's smaller than a credit card and has interchangeable jackets. These jackets - ...
CORRECTION
Mar 06, 2008; ... CORRECTION - The "Israel advocacy" caption, which appeared in last week's Jewish World column, incorrectly identified the ...
Hypocrisy flies as firestorm hits McCain over Hagee
Mar 06, 2008; ... Analysis Many conservatives, not to mention Clinton supporters, were smiling wide last week during the Democratic debate in Ohio when MSNBC's Tim Russert asked Barack Obama about being praised by Louis Farrakhan. But the controversy faded almost before it started after Obama ...
Diaspora-Israel divide
Mar 06, 2008; ... Seminar aims to help synagogues bridge gap NIR ETZION, Israel - Perched high in the forested hills overlooking the Mediterranean, a group of U.S. rabbis and Jewish leaders hunkers down to brainstorm a riddle harder to solve than it might seem: how to make Israel meaningful to their ...
Jewish coed victimized by 'prank' swastika
Mar 06, 2008; ... A swastika as a joke? Shira Zemel doesn't buy it. "It's absurd," said the 21-year-old junior at Goucher College in Towson, whose offcampus student housing apartment recently was defaced with a swastika etched by another Jewish student who claimed in his published confession that "it was intended ...
JCCGW uses grant to expand class offerings for seniors
Mar 06, 2008; ... The Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington has expanded and rebranded its senior programs, thanks to a grant from Montgomery County. The $65,000 grant from the county's Department of Aging and Disability Services allows the center to put "all of our adult programming under one ...
Israel's economic engine
Mar 06, 2008; ... A.U. event focuses on 'Israel Biz at 60' Before a packed DC. audience of some 200 Monday night, Israeli corporate leader and philanthropist Raya Strauss Bendror recounted how her parents emigrated from Germany to Palestine in 1936, starting a small dairy that would eventually grow into a ...
Kulanu gets award
Mar 06, 2008; ... The Silver Spring-based nonprofit Kulanu ("all of us"), an organization dedicated to discovering and helping lost Jewish communities around the world, together with the Mirembe Kawomera Delicious Peace Fair Trade Coffee Cooperative of Uganda and the Thanksgiving Coffee Company, have received the ...
Fund endows Israel studies chair in S.F.
Mar 06, 2008; ... A San Francisco-based fund has given $3.75 million to endow a chair in Israel studies at San Francisco State University. The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund made the announcement on Monday of last week of the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Chair in Israel Studies, which will be the largest endowed ...
Reforming Israel's image
Mar 06, 2008; ... Local couple promoting progressive agenda Miriam Daniel and her husband, Larry Wolff, hope to convince Diaspora Jews that Israel is more than the sum of its stereotypes. That category, according to the Chevy Chase couple, includes a collage of popular images that depict the ...
Brandeis names competion winner
Mar 06, 2008; ... Brandeis University has selected a Harvard graduate student as the winner in its competition for a visiting professorship and book deal. Yehuda Kurtzer, a former D.C. resident who is finishing his doctorate in Jewish history at Harvard University, won for his proposal, "The Sacred Task of ...
Families settle Delaware school case
Mar 06, 2008; ... Two Jewish families have settled with a Delaware school board over pressure on their children to become Christian. The suit filed by the Dobrich family and another family allowed to remain anonymous against the Indian River School District in the southern part of the state was settled in a ...
Vandals strike memorial to Austrian Jews
Mar 06, 2008; ... An artwork remembering the suffering of Austrian Jews under the Nazis was destroyed days after it was installed. Artist Peter Wagner had planted the 70 wooden stakes last week alongside a road in the town of Oberschutzen, near a controversial memorial that serves as a reminder of Germany's ...
Ramon blasts 'Holocaust' reference by Abbas
Mar 06, 2008; ... Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's senior deputy has lambasted Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas for likening Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip to the Holocaust. Abbas said Friday that Israeli attacks in Gaza, which targeted Hamas rocket crews, but also caused civilian ...
Riots in the West Bank
Mar 06, 2008; ... Palestinians in the West Bank rioted Sunday in response to the Israeli-Hamas fighting in the Gaza Strip. Israeli police clashed with hundreds of violent demonstrators in Eastern Jerusalem, Hebron and other West Bank areas. Dozens of Palestinians were reported to have been ...
Gaza solidarity stirs ire
Mar 06, 2008; ... Students at an Israeli college ignited a controversy when they observed a minute of silence Monday in memory of Palestinian civilians killed in the Gaza Strip. At the behest of an Arab colleague, students in the Max Stern Academic College of Emek Yezreel's educational faculty stood in ...
Druze dodge draft less than their Jewish peers
Mar 06, 2008; ... Young people from Israel's Druze minority are less likely to evade mandatory military service than their Jewish counterparts, according to official data. Col. Ramez Immadin, the military officer responsible for minority conscripts, told Israel Radio Tuesday that 83 percent of ...
Was Moses high on Sinai?
Mar 06, 2008; ... The biblical Moses may have been high at Mount Sinai, according to an Israeli researcher. Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argues that the miraculous sights and sounds in the Exodus account of God's giving of the Torah to Moses may have ...
Oren comes to the Hilltop
Mar 06, 2008; ... A local university that has been criticized for accepting a $20 million donation from a Saudi prince will host a well-known Israeli historian later this year. Michael Oren, author of Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, will be a ...
Meeting the pope
Mar 06, 2008; ... Four Jewish leaders will be among the participants in an interfaith meeting with Pope Benedict XVI when he comes to Washington next month. Rabbis Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly; Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union; and ...
Money to flow directly to P.A.
Mar 06, 2008; ... President George W. Bush has waived congressional restrictions to transfer $150 million directly to the Palestinian Authority. The transfer ordered last Friday is part of a package of more than $500 million in Palestinian assistance earmarked for use this year. Most of the money is project based ...
NJDC to Rove: You think we're idiots?
Mar 06, 2008; ... The National Jewish Democratic Council is criticizing Karl Rove for suggesting that Barack Obama might cut aid to Israel. In an appearance on the television program Fox News Sunday last weekend, the former Bush adviser noted a recent Obama comment that money being spent on the Iraq war ...
White House stays out of PLO suits
Mar 06, 2008; ... The Bush administration on Friday declined to interfere in the case of American terror victims who are suing the Palestine Liberation Organization. On Friday, U.S. attorneys told the court the government would not be participating in this case, but held out the possibility that it might ...
Foxman: Enough with Obama-Farrakhan talk
Mar 06, 2008; ... The head of the Anti-Defamation League says it's time to pack away Louis Farrakhan fears when it comes to Barack Obama. "He was very clear," Abraham Foxman, the ADL's national director, said, describing Obama's response when he was asked in a debate last week about the public praise he ...
No place for innuendo, lies
Mar 06, 2008; ... I will also carry with me an unshakable commitment to the security of Israel and the friendship between the United States and Israel .... "I will strengthen Israel's security and ... work for two states that can live side by side in peace and security with Israel's status as a Jewish ...
The Gaza disconnect
Mar 06, 2008; ... Washington Watch Crossing into Gaza from Israel last Sunday were 62 truckloads of supplies, mostly food stuffs to help feed Palestinians; crossing overhead in the opposite direction were dozens of Kassam and Grad rockets intended to kill Israelis. "Does no one notice the ...
Costa Rica's president makes mischief
Mar 06, 2008; ... With a population of about 4.5 million, Costa Rica is one of the smaller countries in the Western Hemisphere. It has, however, for more than a century, drawn special attention because of its outstanding reputation as a country solidly committed to the cause of democracy. Costa Rica also ...
... could diminish major rift
Mar 06, 2008; ... Conversion deal with Israel ... We are all too familiar with the stories. Someone who for his entire life considered himself Jewish is suddenly told by a rabbinical court that his Jewish identity is suspect. A woman adopted and converted as a child is informed that the conversion does not ...
... hurts Jews by choice, families
Mar 06, 2008; ... The Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Rabbinical Council of America have concluded an agreement related to conversion that will allow the two groups to work together. This is a reaction to the April 2006 announcement by Israel's Sephardic chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, that he would no longer ...
March madness
Mar 06, 2008; ... Capital Schmoozing Some of you taking a glance at this column's headline instantly recognize it as a reference to the upcoming NCAA college basketball tournament. The rest of you have no idea what the headline means other than guessing that this month's column probably involves some sort ...
In Focus: Lori Lipman Brown
Mar 06, 2008; ... When Lori Lipman Brown was a child growing up in New York's Brooklyn and Queens in the 1960s, her parents weren't familliar with the Humanistic Judaism movement. They just knew that while they appreciated Judaism's emphasis on social justice, "they were becoming more and more ...
Ashkelon - a new front in the Gaza war
Mar 06, 2008; ... ASHKELON, Israel - Eighteen-yearold Eden Sharbane awoke before dawn Saturday to the eerie sound of a "red alert" siren in her Ashkelon neighborhood. Glancing outside her window, she saw a red-and-orange blur: A rocket was about to hit her apartment building. Sharbane screamed and called ...
Condo and townhome sales increase despite slow market
Mar 06, 2008; ... Sales of condominiums and townhomes are picking up. These units are just too popular with a large segment of buyers to be held down long by a general sales slump. When I first started writing this real estate column in 1971, I had to explain what this new type of housing with the strange ...
Feeling sentimental
Mar 06, 2008; ... Couple writes music for 'Next Stop: Silver Spring' Writing the music was an act of love. That's how Sharon Freedman-Gruber describes the songs that she and her husband, Jeff, wrote for the documentary Next Stop Silver Spring (www.silverspringtrain.org), about the history and restoration ...
Joyous sculptor enlivens 'Celebration of the Arts'
Mar 06, 2008; ... Joyous sculptor enlivens 'Celebration of the Arts' 'Red hot Night' to kick off JCCNV arts, crafts show A sculptor whose work overflows with happiness. An especially festive, informal preshow gala. An unusual opportunity to understand the artists. That's what makes this ...
Exhibit: U.S. Jewry was not silent during Nazi era
Mar 06, 2008; ... Exhibit: U.S. Jewry was not silent during Nazi era He had always heard that American Jews did not speak up for their counterparts in Europe after the Nazis took power in Germany in January 1933. So when David Magidson saw a photo of a mass march in New York in March 1933 that ...
'Pangs' gets two Helen Hayes nods
Mar 06, 2008; ... Theater J's English-language version of Motti Lerner's Pangs of the Messiah has received a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Outstanding New Play or Musical. In addition, Alexander Strain got a nomination for Outstanding Actor for his part in that play at the Washington DC Jewish Community ...
Postwar odyssey
Mar 06, 2008; ... Postwar odyssey Author's latest novel looks at collaboration of intellectuals in Nazi Germany As a law student in 1960s Germany, Bernhard Schlink was taught by professors who served in the ThUd Reich. One Gestapo informer awakened him to the beauty of English; another onetime ...
Jake Werbin has his moment on the court
Mar 06, 2008; ... The Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy has a basketball player who helped teach a lesson in sportsmanship and the value of chesed, kindness, during a special game a few weeks ago. Jake Werbin of Silver Spring is a member the fifth-grade basketball team. He's in the school's Sulam program, ...
Madness begins for Jewish coach and his Volunteers
Mar 06, 2008; ... To call Bruce Pearl, the Jewish coach of the University of Tennessee Volunteers men's basketball team, a little atypical as NCAA coaches go would be luce categorizing the steroid problem in baseball as "a small vitamin misunderstanding." The charismatic coach is known for wearing a hat ...
Dan Shomron, commanded Entebbe rescue mission, 70
Mar 06, 2008; ... Dan Shomron, the former Israeli armed forces chief, who died Feb. 26 at age 70, commanded one of the most well-known and successful military operations in Israel Defense Forces history - the counterterrorism hostagerescue mission at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, overnight July 3-4,1976. In ...
Rabbi William Berkowitz, 83, founded dialogue series
Mar 06, 2008; ... Rabbi William Berkowitz, a longtime pulpit rabbi and communal leader in New York City who was founder of a popular dialogue series that featured public interviews with hundreds of major politicians and other prominent figures, died in his Manhattan home on Feb. 3 of natural causes. He was ...
David Tauber, N.Y. cantor, killed in flash flood in Israel
Mar 06, 2008; ... An American Jewish cantor drowned on Feb. 25 after being caught up in a flash flood that struck the Ein Gedi nature reserve in the eastern Judean desert in Israel. David Tauber, 34, of New York had driven to the area from Jerusalem with his wife, Heather, who was rescued after an ...
Home economics teachers' faves, revived and renewed
Mar 06, 2008; ... Feeling nostalgic? Remember when home cooking tasted great, when nothing was labeled low-fat, low-carb, low-calorie - low-everything that should taste good? FRP Publishing in NashvUle, Tenn., has succumbed to an overwhelming demand for a cookbook series published back in the '60s: ...
Hadassah chapters put 'fun' in fund-raising
Mar 06, 2008; ... As Hadassah heats up its campaign to build the Sarah Westman Davidson Tower at Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem, Israel, local chapters are offering fun fund-raisers next week, to enlist the community's support. The Northern Virginia Chapter of Hadassah invites the community to join ...
Eat, eat - to aid indigent Israelis
Mar 06, 2008; ... Next Tuesday, the Baltimore-based student-run organization America Eats for Israel, dedicated to aiding impoverished Israelis, wants you to eat out as part of "America Eats for Israel" day, when participating kosher restaurants nationwide will donate 10 percent of their gross profits from the ...
Yad Vahem seeks names, meeting set for volunteers
Mar 06, 2008; ... Allgenerations, Inc., a group for Holocaust survivors, their children and grandchUdren, invites aU members of the community to join its meeting in Northwest Washington, D.C., on Sunday, March 16, to contribute to Yad Vashem's Victims' Names Recovery Project by completing a "Page of Testimony" ...
Just A Menschen
Mar 06, 2008; ... JUFI hires new executive director Jacob Feinspan of Washington, D.C., has been hired to become the new executive director for the District-based Jews United for Justice (JUFJ), a nonprofit organization dedicated to leading Jews in Greater Washington in the pursuit of justice and ...
Adoption workshop offered at JCCNV
Mar 06, 2008; ... The Jewish Social Service Agency of Metropolitan Washington is offering a free adoption workshop on Monday, 79:30 p.m., at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia. "Building A Family Through Adoption" will be led by social worker Beth Lutton, director of adoptions for JSSA, and ...
ACE offers seniors continued learning
Mar 06, 2008; ... The Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in Rockville is set this month to start the spring semester of its new senior adult education program. The Adult Center for Education (ACE), inaugurated late last year and funded by a grant from the Montgomery County Department of Aging ...
Adult ed. seminars set at Sanctuary
Mar 06, 2008; ... Am Kolel Sanctuary and Renewal Center in Upper Montgomery County is offering an adult education spring seminars series on Jewish literature and music, to kick off Wednesday, March 19, with a presentation by Yiddishist Rabbi Max Ticktin, professor of Jewish studies at George Washington ...
Jewish genealogy conference set
Mar 06, 2008; ... Beginners and experts in the field of Jewish genealogy are invited to attend the International Association of Jewish Genealogy's 28th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, to be held Aug. 17-22 in Chicago. Co-hosted by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois and the Illiana ...
Partnerships tangible and intangible
Mar 06, 2008; ... This week's Torah portion is Pekude, Exodus 38:21-40:38. With this week's sidra, we officially close the book of Exodus. Looking back, we find three distinct sections: the oppression and redemption from Egypt; the giving of the Torah at Sinai; and the building of the Mishkan or ...
Celebrations
Mar 06, 2008; ... Kvell about it in WJW To have your child's bar/bat mitzvah announcement published in WJWm the issue before the event, it must received no later than 10 days before that edition. This deadline also pertains to anniversary announcements. Wedding announcements must be received no later than ...
Their hearts were in the East
Mar 06, 2008; ... They were adults and chUdren, professionals and amateurs, from second-graders to septuagenarians, and together they sang out in celebration of Israel on Sunday during Libi ba'Mizrach-My Heart Is in the East: A Musical Celebration of Israel's 60th Birthday, two concerts held at the Music Center ...
Creating a community culture of inclusion
Mar 06, 2008; ... Many of the Bible's great leaders and teachers are thought to have had various disabilities. Isaac became blind in his later years: "When Isaac was old and his eyes were too dim to see ..." (Genesis 27:1). Jacob had difficulty walking and also became blind. Even Moses, the leader of the ...
This one hit home
Mar 13, 2008; ... Yeshiva murder an attack on religious Zionism TEL AVIV - The one with glasses and a wide smile was the brother of a friend, the one with blue eyes and side curls the son of another. In the close-knit world of religious Zionism, no one feels far removed from the grief for eight ...
Tugging at heartstrings
Mar 13, 2008; ... Increasingly active, federation women's philanthropy draws members through passion, sharing with others Shelly Kupfer always had intended to get involved with the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. But there was something about the first women's affinity group event she attended a ...
Mishmash
Mar 13, 2008; ... Take the Torah to the train Three morning minyamin have been a regular happening on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv train. And, for the first time last week, the men were able to pray with a Torah scroll. After consulting the Beit Shemesh Rabbinate, lawyer David Schapiro was given ...
Toy story
Mar 13, 2008; ... With approach of Purim, toy safety again a question If parents at Ohr Kodesh Congregation's Purim carnival this weekend have questions about the safety of the toys their kids have won, the synagogue has an answer. A sheet of paper at the prize table will note that the vendor-toy ...
Jewish past as prologue
Mar 13, 2008; ... Bronfman winner seeks to 'rebuild' Jewish memory A growing number of Jews are embracing traditionalism - albeit in an updated form - with the help of a powerful tool that had fallen victim to modernity. That tool, according to Jewish scholar Yehuda Kurtzer, is particularism, the ...
Making the case for Israel
Mar 13, 2008; ... Event Stresses advocacy seasoned by realism Microphone in hand, Dennis Ross assured the listeners Sunday he was not there as an advocate - apparently one of the few people present who could make that claim. With that, Ross spent the next half hour or so advocating what he ...
A rainbow of Jews
Mar 13, 2008; ... Multiracial gathering honors Jewish diversity The multihued new face of American Judaism was on radiant display a week ago Saturday night at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in the District. The occasion was a celebration of Jewish racial and ethnic diversity that drew about 80 ...