Just as the story of the ancient Hebrews\’ deliverance from slavery has been retold over the generations as the defining moment of the Jewish people, so have the Stonewall Riots become the story of the deliverance of a people.
Pundits were sure that Schneerson\’s demise in June 1994 would lead to the disintegration of the Chassidic movement he led for nearly a half century. Instead, the movement has experienced an explosive burst of growth.
According to the ZOA, Al-Marayati\’s appointment is tantamount to naming white supremacist David Duke to a civil rights task force. \”We don\’t want anyone on this group who condones terrorism and praises terrorist groups as Al-Marayati and his top leaders have done,\” said Morton A. Klein, president of the ZOA, in Philadelphia. Who could argue with that?
There was a time when news of the high school massacre in Littleton, Colo., would have struck Israelis as incomprehensible, evidence of some strange, alien disease floating around America, to which Israel was certainly immune.
Not anymore.
The attacks marked the heaviest cross-border violence since a cease-fire in 1996 ended with Operation Grapes of Wrath, Israel\’s 16-day campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah.
Today, the National Jewish Coalition for Literacy has more than 3,500 participants, including doctors and teachers, teenagers and retirees who volunteer to tutor one child at least one hour per week. The program has reconnected assimilated Jews to the Jewish community and Jewish suburbanites to the inner-city.
Cynicism was part of Judaism when I was growing up, and even now it\’s hard to give up.
The Skirball and the Huntington are located some 20 miles apart, but the institutions and their presidents existed in different worlds. The Huntington is situated in old-moneyed, Protestant San Marino, and its president is an old-line American of Norwegian descent.
It seems that Dawn Farber thought of everything when she designed and stocked this new, two-story playhouse for Temple Isaiah\’s preschool.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.