Israeli President Shimon Peres is visiting Washington. Peres will be in Washington next week, the Israeli embassy said in a release Thursday, and arrangements for meetings with \”government leaders\” are underway.
On the 25th anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, 35 volunteers and 15 Teach For America teachers joined our team in Washington, D.C., to honor the life and legacy of Dr. King through a day of service. Together they created thousands of study materials for hundreds of students in struggling schools across the District of Columbia. The volunteers came together as a diverse group, from big cities and small towns, a range of professions and varying degrees of Jewish connection. But for those five hours on Jan. 17 they were a community united in answering Dr. King’s call to greatness. In fitting testament, each wore a shirt proclaiming that \”Everybody can be GREAT because everybody can SERVE.\”
Washington-area clergy joined an interfaith prayer service for the release of U.S. government contractor Alan Gross from a Cuban prison. Tuesday\’s service, organized by the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, was held as U.S. State Department officials in Cuba to attend meetings on migration were set to press for Gross\’ freedom, the Washington Post reported. Cuban authorities detained Gross on Dec. 3, 2009 on his way out of the country, saying he was a spy. Gross\’ family and State Department officials say he was in the country on a U.S. Agency for International Development contract to help the country\’s Jewish community of about 1,500 to communicate with other Jewish communities through the Internet.
Palestinian and Israeli leaders will not meet for negotiations although they will be in Washington this weekend, the U.S. State Department said. \”Right now, I’m not anticipating that we would have Israelis and the Palestinians in the same room at this time,\” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Wednesday. The United States this week abandoned efforts to persuade Israel into extending a moratorium on settlement building as a means of pulling the Palestinians back into direct talks. Crowley\’s remark suggested that the Obama administration for the time being was giving up on direct talks.
David Yahudian endured embarrassment and fear growing up in Teheran. On walks in the market, his father ordered him to tuck the Magen David necklace inside his shirt and — even worse — called him by an alias, Ali, rather than by his overtly Jewish name. Following an Israel-Iran soccer match at the 1974 Asia Games, he saw fans burning Israeli flags in the parking lot.
\”I don\’t think L.A. gets enough credit for its political activism,\” said Michael Tuchin, 43, incoming president of University Synagogue and an avid AIPAC supporter since he was a student at Stanford University
As the Cherry Blossom Festival kicks off on March 26, the spring weather descending on Washington, D.C., makes it great for walking among the cherry-inspired events throughout the nation\’s capital. And one neighborhood ripe for a stroll during a D.C. weekend getaway is prestigious Georgetown.
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