Community Briefs
Community Briefs
When Jews come across the biblical name for God — spelled yod-hay-vav-hay in Hebrew — custom teaches us to substitute the term Adonai ("my Lord"), for according to Jewish tradition those letters are the unpronounceable name of God.
In a narrow Jerusalem alley a few blocks away from the souvenir shops of Ben Yehuda Street, a former drug addict who wants to\nbe called Shimon is telling me the story of his horrific childhood.
First let\’s do the numbers: It\’s been about four days that I\’ve been single. I was married at 23 and stayed that way for 17 years. I\’ve just met a charming and articulate woman at a party and stumbled through an uncharming and inarticulate request for her phone number.
And wonder of wonders, she gave it to me.
Now all I had to do was call her for a date.
President Bush\’s Jan. 7 proposal to dramatically expand immigration to the United States ignited a national debate about this highly emotional issue. While this is a critical policy that will profoundly affect all Americans, it is a policy that must be of particular concern to American Jews.
There is something Marxist about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon\’s pledge to \”disengage\” Israel from the Palestinians through the completion of a security barrier and the evacuation of a few settlements. Just like Groucho Marx, Sharon is declaring his intention to leave and stay at the same time.
It was late on Sunday afternoon when a high school student from Cleveland, his shaggy hair covered by a huge multicolored yarmulke, came bounding down the steps of Ohio State University\’s student center. An Israeli flag was draped around his bulky parka and a broad smile plastered across his face.
Largely unnoticed, Palestinian filmmakers have lately been turning out a respectable number of movies. In the process, they have proven themselves more skilled propagandists than their Israeli counterparts, whose works tend to be personalized escapist fares or highly self-critical of their society.
The ripple effects of Mideast politics are spreading as far as Hollywood\’s glamour-studded Oscar awards.
On a rocky hillside in Mardan, Pakistan, in the 1990s, filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici stared in awe at a hulking pillar covered with faded script. The stone was an ancient propaganda sign, one of many that had been placed throughout a Buddhist empire 2,300 years ago. But while the other stones appeared in Sanskrit, the archaic language on this tablet was Aramaic.