At first glance, \”Testimony\” (Aperture, $40) looks like an innocent-enough coffee table book of Israel-themed photographs. Thumb through the first few pages and you\’ll see examples of photographer Gillian Laub\’s excellent portraiture. Each color image is accompanied by a simple enough quote from the subject, an Arab or Jew sharing the same bit of the Holy Land.
In Israel, where service in the armed forces is every man\’s — and most women\’s — duty, the majority of Israelis, from secular to Modern Orthodox, have long scorned the ultra-Orthodox \”black hats\” for avoiding military service by studying in yeshivas. Now, a battalion of ultra-religious young men, known as Nahal Haredi, is seeking to change this image by combining Torah study with the bearing of arms.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) want a few good men like Zach Taylor (photo). Actually, the IDF wants a lot of them. Taylor is a 20-year-old volunteer from North Hollywood serving in an Israeli infantry battalion of Torah-observant and predominantly ultra-Orthodox soldiers.\n
Finally, I\’m grateful to the Almighty for having given me such a remarkable mother who, by example, taught her many offspring about the beauty of Judaism, how to lead meaningful lives and how important it is to do chesed for others. May her memory be a blessing.
\”I was raised Jewish, was always told I was Jewish,\” said the 35-year-old, who did not want his real name printed. \”I went to Jewish camps, even had a bar mitzvah.\” But when Levine joined a Conservative congregation after his marriage, the rabbi told him that because his mother was not Jewish, he needed a legal conversion.
With meteoric technological advances presenting many businesses with crises verging on the existential, there is a growing need for nimble minds able to adapt to changes in the marketplace. Given this environment, it is fitting that Jonathan Feinstein, a professor at the Yale School of Management, should come out with \”The Nature of Creative Development,\” a book that attempts to model the trajectory of creativity within individuals.
April is a big month for high school seniors. Colleges have made their admissions decisions, and some very happy students now have the enviable problem of needing to decide which college they will attend.
And yet despite these avocations, the 40-something Kenneth Klee said he felt there was something missing in his life. He\’s now studying for his smicha, or ordination, as a rabbi, which he intends to compliment his sideline as a spiritual counselor.
The Cervantes Institute has been sponsoring Ladino readings and seminars at its branches in Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Bucharest and Sofia. Now Urrutia says the institute will create a Ladino Department with a Judeo-Spanish archive at its headquarters in Madrid. And Ladino will be the focus of a new Cervantes Institute in Salonika, which will be located next to the city\’s Sephardic Museum.
America\’s richest prize in the humanities, worth $1.5 million, has been awarded to the scholarly son of a Swedish American carpenter for a three-year project on the impact of the Holocaust on American literature.
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