When was the last time you stood on your head? If you don\’t practice yoga, and you\’re not a 2-year-old, it\’s probably been quite a while. Noting that my toddler couldn’t get enough of being upside down on his little sister’s infant seat, I understood the allure. Seeing the world in a completely unexpected way is titillating. Subverting the natural order of things is energizing.
Conservative Judaism is dying, I hear — or at least according to the media. Not so. Please don\’t tell me that because North America\’s United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism has had its problems, that means Conservative/Masorti Judaism is declining around the Jewish world.
A bipartisan slate of U.S. senators pressed the Obama administration on its policy on China\’s dealings with Iran. The letter, signed by 10 senators and first reported last week in Foreign Policy, lists foreign entities — most of them Chinese — dealing with Iran\’s energy sector. The senators called on the Obama administration to implement a law passed last summer that expands sanctions to third parties dealing with Iran\’s energy sector.
The Palestinian reaction to the grisly killings of five Israeli family members in the Jewish settlement of Itamar, on the West Bank, has prompted many Israelis to ask the same question of the Palestinians that the world often asks of the Israeli government: Are they really serious about peace? On the one hand, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas went on Israel Radio on Monday to condemn the March 11 killings of the Fogel family members, including a 4-year-old boy and a 3-month-old girl, as “despicable, inhuman and immoral.”
Chabad-Lubavitch centers in Tokyo and Hong Kong have shipped tons of food into one of the Japanese cities hardest hit by last week\’s earthquake and tsunami. The Tokyo-based Chabad-Lubavitch of Japan and the Hong Kong-based Chabad-Lubavitch of Asia have shipped bread, rice, noodles, soups, canned foods, flour and oil to the city of Sendai, Chabad.org reported.
There is \”a good possibility\” that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head in January, will attend the space shuttle launch in April captained by her husband. \”We think there\’s a good possibility that she will be there,\” one of Giffords\’ neurologists, Dong Kim, told The Washington Post over the weekend, echoing similar statements to other media outlets by other Giffords\’ physicians and aides.
Israel is staring at a fork in the road, with potential disaster along either path. On the path to the left lies a major Israeli peace initiative that deals with all the core issues under dispute with the Palestinians. On the path to the right lies more waiting, possibly with some kind of offer of an interim peace agreement with the Palestinians, until conditions are right for something more.
An Israeli ice hockey team of 10- to 13-year-olds, who mostly practice on roller skates, won the gold medal at a tournament in Canada. The Bat Yam Club peewee ice skating team, made up of boys from Bat Yam, Rishon Lezion, Nes Ziona, Maalot and Kfar Saba in central Israel, went undefeated in five games to take the Division B title last month at the the Bernieres-Saint-Redempteur International Peewee Tournament in suburban Quebec City, the Canadian Jewish News reported.
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