As the United States struggles with the issue of gay marriage, countries around the world face their own challenges in discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) community.
Games geared toward working out the brain can improve cognitive functioning from middle age on. Most of us now know that we can keep our gray matter in peak form and even help stave off diseases like Alzheimer’s through mental exercises.
Fresh from a practice match against two boys, Sivan Krems, who turns 15 on June 5, is eager to talk about her favorite way to spend time: playing tennis. She breezes right through talk of the practice match — “It went well,” she said with a sly smile — and into a somewhat understated discussion of her recent accomplishments.
Here are some recent stories from Israel that you may have missed.\n
In October 2009, an official of the Israeli Council for Higher Education told the Knesset Education Committee that Israel had inadvertently become the world’s largest “minds exporter.”\n
Spurred by a major grant from one of the largest Jewish foundations, the rabbinical seminaries of three major synagogue movements are forging a groundbreaking partnership to train Jewish educators.
Moshe Rosen, the Jewish convert to Christianity who founded the Evangelical missionary group Jews for Jesus, died May 19, 2010, in San Francisco after a prolonged battle with cancer. He was 78. His passing presents an opportunity to reflect on the devastating effect he had on Jewish lives.
“Prayer can be utterly boring,” Rabbi Elazar Muskin said to a gathering in his own house of prayer, Young Israel of Century City. Muskin was the last of three rabbis to speak on the subject last Shabbat afternoon, after Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of B’nai David-Judea Congregation and Rabbi Kalman Topp of Beth Jacob Congregation.
David Suissa confuses reconciliation with forgiveness (“Eva’s Peace Process,” May 21). People and nations can be reconciled with each other — and, as part of that, agree to live in peace in the future — without forgiving each other for past wrongs (e.g., U.S. and Japan, Jews and Catholics). Conversely, people and nations can forgive each other for past wrongs but never want to interact with each other again (e.g., divorced couples). I discuss these differences — and a third, related category of pardon — in Chapter 6 of my book, “Love Your Neighbor and Yourself.” David Suissa may be put to sleep by the proposal actively to pursue a two-state solution, but if that could be achieved, most Israeli and Diaspora Jews would say dayenu, it would be enough for us.\n
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