What brought the first, mainly Sephardic, Jews to Charleston was its remarkable religious tolerance, not to mention the economic prospects elevating them to a new aristocracy to which their Ashkenazi kinsmen who followed greedily aspired.
Bike the Sites, a smart solution to the challenges of sightseeing in heavily trafficked D.C., allows visitors to enjoy Washington\’s history and architecture in an environmentally friendly way.
At the top of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, there are a host of trails — including a three-quarters of a mile loop through picturesque Long Valley, just behind the Mountain Station that introduces visitors to regional plants and animals.
As our British Airways jet approached Vienna, we were able to make out the famous skyline of the Austrian capital.
Soon after Alef Jewish Restaurant opened for business in Krakow\’s Jewish quarter more than a decade ago, a gaggle of Polish schoolgirls wandered in during their lunch break. The anxious students asked the restaurant\’s co-owner, Janusz Benigier, whether they served non-Jews.
Every other year, our congregation travels to a different part of the Jewish world to meet and, if necessary, help our fellow Jews. Having traveled to Israel, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union many times, as well as Turkey, Morocco, Spain, Argentina and Brazil, our experiences have mostly been with communities under political, demographic or economic siege. This trip was different.
In the back of the Alte-Neue Synagogue, a rope ladder hangs from a small aperture in the attic. I shimmy up the spiked metal fence, stand atop it and fling myself across a 5-foot space to grab the ladder. Fifteen steps and I am at the window. The opening is too small for me to climb inside. But I can see inside perfectly. And that\’s when I see it. Him.
The Jewish Journal: Are you The Golem of Prague?
It\’s midnight in Milan and we\’re in a taxi racing through the streets to our hotel. We\’ve just arrived from Los Angeles. We\’re hazy and tired from a 24-hour trip that should have taken us 15 and from spending too many hours delayed in Heathrow Airport, with nothing to do but sit on our luggage.
Twenty years ago, an Italian television channel hired Annie Sacerdoti, a Jewish writer and editor in Milan, to produce a documentary about Jewish history in Italy\’s northern Lombardy region.
At the time, Sacerdoti had long been an active member of the 10,000-strong Jewish community in Milan, the Lombard capital.
But what she found while researching the program changed her sense of identity as an Italian Jew and in many ways changed her life. In small provincial towns around the region, she found Jewish cemeteries abandoned to the elements and deserted synagogues standing empty or used as carpenter shops or other places of business.
On a recent Caribbean cruise aboard the MSY Wind Surf — the largest yacht among Holland America\’s upscale Windstar fleet — the talk on deck was about war, nannies and the country\’s best Catholic schools. Sunburned blondes lingered over a four-course dinner, featuring dishes such as bacon-crusted salmon and fresh pasta with shellfish.
