I wanted to try it out. You know, take the old b-word out for a spin in a totally non-threatening environment where I didn\’t know anyone and, therefore, could be neither mocked nor held accountable.
When I was a junior in college, I spent the year in Jerusalem, studying at the Hebrew University. That year in Israel, more than any other single experience, determined the direction my life would take. I found myself taking every Judaic studies class I could, and I loved them so much that I decided to go to rabbinic school and spend my life immersed in the excitement and meaning of sacred Jewish texts.
The fresh-faced teenager looks like the girl next door until she displays her swastika tattoo in an episode of \”The Teen Files,\” which continues this week on UPN. \”I think the Holocaust was a good thing,\” she says, serenely. \”[Hitler] probably should have done more.\”
My father Illya Pinhkus Kirtsman was born in 1909 in Odessa, Ukraine, the youngest of 11 children. His older sister and brother immigrated to America in 1912. The whole family planned to follow them. It was their dream for many years. In the 1930s, my father received few letters from his American siblings, and only after W.W.II did he establish communication with them again. By this time, only he and his sister Sonia (the 10th child) were alive. When we received a letter, my father took it to a translator (letters were written in Yiddish) and the whole family would listen to the news from America. We kept the door to our apartment locked. My mother was afraid that people from the KGB might come over, see us reading the letters, and put us in jail.
\”It is disgraceful that there is not a single woman participating in the peace talks. It is disgraceful that there are not more directors general of ministries and chairpersons of government companies,\” said Yael Dayan. \”All we hear are promises, promises, but I hope something will change.\”
Some Catholic and Jewish leaders are denouncing a campaign by Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center against elevating wartime Pope Pius XII to sainthood.
Assemblyman Robert Hertzberg strides through his district offices at a pace usually reserved for a commuter late to catch and early morning flight to Sacramento — a situation with which the busy politician is all too familiar. Here, within the confines of his home turf, his energy bounces off the walls, only slightly contained by his gracious manner.
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