Jewish adventure enthusiasts not only make an effort to do the hobbies they love with other Jews, but they do so looking for religious or spiritual meaning. By combining their dual interests, this growing cadre of adrenaline seekers is building a new definition of what it means to do — or be — Jewish.
More than 80 studio executives, producers, directors, lawyers, agents, distributors and rabbis all enjoyed a Shabbat dinner together in the south of France. For some, Shabbat was a new experience. For others, a weekly ritual. Still for others, it was simply another networking event.
March of the Living, the international educational program that began in 1988, has brought approximately 90,000 teenagers, accompanied by Jewish educators, social workers and survivors, to Poland for a week. Critics worry it has become a \”March of the Living Dead\”
The title, \”Madame Dread: A Tale of Love, Voodoo and Civil Strife in Haiti,\” comes from the nickname given to her by the kids in her Port-au-Prince neighborhood. In Haitian tradition, women take on the first names of their husbands; in her case she was named for the dreadlocks of her boyfriend (who later became her husband). She also refers to herself as a \”Voodoo Jew.\”
I really wanted to reach out to my uncle to wish him a happy birthday, but I didn\’t have his phone number or his address. If I did, I\’d certainly call him or visit him, and certainly I would have mailed him a card. To be honest, I am embarrassed to admit this, but I actually don\’t know where he really is now, and perhaps you could help me find him.
The best way to discover Mozart here might be a night at the Vienna Opera. I was lucky enough to attend a performance of \”The Magic Flute\” during my visit, which was sponsored by Austria Tourism. This was classical Mozart through and through in terms of the music, but the performance was strikingly modern.
\”Mozart does not belong to any nation. It would be a total misunderstanding for anyone to lay claim to Mozart,\” said Peter Marboe, Vienna Mozart Year artistic director. \”That makes it obscene that the Nazis should claim him as an example of a great German artist and all the while hide his Jewish collaborators.\”
Long before there was a State of Israel, there was a state of the Jews. Its name was Gibraltar, and it was ceded to Conversos — Spanish Jews who had been forced to convert to Catholicism — in 1474 at the urging of Pedro de Herrera of Cordoba, himself a Converso.
Herrera convinced the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who had led the recapture of Gibraltar from the Moors in 1462, that special taxes and costs born by Conversos to build homes and maintain a cavalry on the rock would make it worth his financial while to give the Conversos control, as is detailed in a small book devoted to the subject published in 1976. For two years, 4,350 Conversos lived in Gibraltar, until the duke decided he would rather run the show and forced them to return to Cordoba and, ultimately, to the clutches of the Inquisition.
Ziplining with the Orthodox. Digging for Maccabean relics with archaeologists. Off-roading on the Golan. We planned our family trip to Israel on the theory that our kids would learn more if they were happy and engaged than if they were bored and bedraggled.
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