Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels received the surprising news during Rosh Hashanah morning services at Beth Shir Sholom in Santa Monica. The Rev. Sandra Richards of the Church in Ocean Park stood up in her seat to tell him: The Oct. 1 vote on whether to decertify the union at the Miramar Sheraton Hotel had resulted in a virtual draw.\n
Amid the bizarre string of foreign-policy fiascos in which Israelfound itself mired as it greeted the new year, surely none was quiteso bizarre as the case of runaway teenager Samuel Sheinbein ofMaryland.
On Sept. 10, the day Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrived in Israel, the country became preoccupied with another event: the disappearance of Ya\’acov Schwartz.
Madeleine Albright left behind a Middle East that\’s more fearful than when she arrived on Sept. 10 to salvage the peace process. In her first official visit, the secretary of state failed to restore even a modicum of trust between Israelis and Palestinians, or to coax the Syrians back to the negotiating table.
How did it come about that, just prior to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright\’s visit to the Middle East, the government of Israel released some funds it was withholding from the Palestinian Authority? And then after her departure, it transferred 50 percent of the moneys owed to the Palestinians?
More than a century ago, Theodor Herzl was a prominent Europeanjournalist who lived in Vienna and was essentially a Jewish assimilationist. He wasn\’t much concerned about Jewish life or identity. As an intellectual, he considered himself a citizen of Europe.\n\nThen came the assignment that would change his life, and world Jewry, forever.
Charges against a Brooklyn Chassidic rabbi of groping a 15-year-old girl during a transpacific flight were part of an extortion plot and will be dismissed by federal prosecutors.
As Israel nears its 50th birthday, events have shifted attentionaway from the stalled peace talks. What dominates the headlines nowis the warlike rhetoric among Jewish factions — both within Israeland in the Diaspora — as they clash over the issue of religiouspluralism.
In truth, though, many other Orthodox Jews — including most of Agudath Israel\’s constituency — do not consider Yom Ha Shoah to be the appropriate time for focusing on the destruction of Jewish Europe.
In addition to the usual bathing suits,socks and shorts, as suggested by Camp Hess Kramer on its inventory list, my daughter, Samantha, needed an orange sweat shirt with blue (preferably royal) lettering\nspelling out the words \”Leadership \’97\” on the front and her name on the back. Right away, I could foresee trouble.
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