Feed aggregatorConey Island Impresario Richard Zigun Plans Comeback After Hurricane SandyHurricane Sandy laid waste to Coney Island and shut down Richard Zigun’s famed sideshow theater. After soaking up $500,000 in losses, he’s back, just in time for summer. Click here for the rest of the article...If Rabbis Are Allowed To Intermarry, Get Ready for the Non-Jewish RabbiAs the Reform movement reconsiders its prohibition on intermarried rabbis, one writer imagines what Jewish policy could be next on the chopping block. Click here for the rest of the article...Six Points Jewish Arts Fellowship Closes as Federation Declines To Renew GrantThe innovative Six Points Fellowship is closing its flagship New York program amid federation funding cuts. Artists say it’ll be that much harder to do creative work. Click here for the rest of the article...FBI Reviews Killing of Boston Bombers' Pal Eyed in Jewish Triple Murder on 9/11A special Federal Bureau of Investigation team from Washington on Thursday began reviewing the death of a Chechen immigrant linked to the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, a day after he was shot and killed by an agent during questioning in Orlando. Click here for the rest of the article...Daybreak• As President Obama folded Israeli-Palestinian peace into his counterterrorism strategy speech today, Secretary of State John Kerry warned Israelis that prosperity had made peace less of a priority. [ToI] • A bill requiring military service for young Haredi Israelis will be debated next week in the Knesset after a panel advanced the measure today. This should go smoothly. [JTA] George Moustaki, Singer Who Worked With Edith Piaf, Dies at 79French singer and songwriter Georges Moustaki, beloved in France for his songs celebrating liberty and collaborations with Edith Piaf, died on Thursday after a long illness. He was 79. Click here for the rest of the article...Talmudic 'Development'; Orthodox Cinema; Chabad Power Struggle?; Top Kosher DogsTHIS WEEK: Staffers debate the Talmudic qualities of the TV show, ‘Arrested Development,’ a possible power struggle within Chabad and the best kosher hot dogs. Click here for the rest of the article...Jerry Lewis Is Not Fond of Female ComediansLast year on the occasion of Jerry Lewis’s 86th birthday, J. Hoberman got to thinking about the complexity of one of America’s most towering comedic figures and the multitudes contained within such a man. It’s been my privilege to see Lewis perform live three times, each in its way offering the spectacle of the ongoing struggle between his superego and id. The first was on the beach at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival where, resplendent in madras cabana wear, the most cerebral Hollywood funny man since Buster Keaton confounded a press conference called to promote the documentary-portrait Bonjour Monsieur Lewis! by speaking “French” (Sharrrrls de Guh-llllllll! Eye-fool Tow-ware!!) at length before pivoting to an utterly humorless insistence on the significance of his contribution to world cinema. My second Lewis sighting came a dozen years later at the Marquis Theater on Broadway where, playing the Devil, Lewis hammed his way through one of the last performances of the revived Damn Yankees, part detached Vegas MC, part shamelessly eye-crossing, face-pulling, applause-signaling shtick artist. The third time was last Friday night at the 92nd Street Y where the Friars Club was presenting a tribute on the occasion of their supreme Abbot’s 86th birthday. Continue reading "Jerry Lewis Is Not Fond of Female Comedians" at... More on Medea Benjamin, President Obama's HecklerEarlier today, as President Obama sought to outline his counterterrorism policy along with a renewed call to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay today, his speech was interrupted a few times by Code Pink co-founder named Medea Benjamin. A noteworthy thing about the interruptions–beyond the fact that President Obama momentarily acknowledged and engaged with her–was that she managed to interrupt three times before being escorted out. This isn’t the first we’ve heard from Benjamin nor will it be the last; last year, we sent Jacob Silverman (making his second appearance on The Scroll today) to a conference on drones in Washington, D.C. where he met with Benjamin, some members of Code Pink, and parts of the consortium trying to lobby for changes in the American foreign policy and its use of drones. Continue reading "More on Medea Benjamin, President Obama's Heckler" at... Julius Berman Insists He's Not to Blame for Claims Conference Botched ProbeJulius Berman, the chairman of the Claims Conference board, insisted he is not to blame for botching an investigation into a 2001 letter exposing massive fraud at the Holocaust restitution organization. Click here for the rest of the article...Balkanization of Western Wall Prayer ls Threat to Jewish UnityThe push by Women of the Wall and others to promote ‘pluralism’ at the Kotel could end up slicing it up. Far from building Jewish unity, that would devalue our holiest site. Click here for the rest of the article...The Adelsons Gives $40 Million to BirthrightThe election season might be over (for now) but Sheldon and Miriam Adelsons aren’t giving up contributions to high-profile campaigns. Their latest contribution is a cool $40 million to Birthright Israel, bringing their lifetime total contribution to the program to a super-high super-chai $180 million. “Sheldon and I are committed to improving the world through cultural exchange and educational opportunity,” said Miriam Adelson in a statement released Wednesday by Birthright Israel, which offers Jews aged 18 to 26 a free 10-day trip to Israel. “Exposing young Jews to Israel helps broaden their awareness and deepen their cultural identity. We are committed to the goal of all young Jewish adults having the opportunity to be inspired by their ancestral homeland.” Continue reading "The Adelsons Gives $40 Million to Birthright" at... Top 10 Badass Mah Jongg JewsGrumpy Jeffrey Goldberg thinks lists of Jews are a bad idea, just because a few white supremacists enjoy using them. Plus, they don’t always include him and/or Natalie Portman. Click here for the rest of the article...3-D Printing Saves the Life of an Ohio BoyThere is considerable uproar brewing today about Glenn Greenwald’s latest Guardian article in which he asks aloud whether the two Islamic terrorists who attacked and killed a British soldier on the day-lit streets of London were terrorists or not. I’m trying to avoid paying too much attention to Glenn Greenwald these days and so I’d like to draw attention instead to Dr. Glenn Green, who helped save Kaiba Gionfriddo, a young Ohio boy’s life through a groundbreaking operation that involved 3-D printing. Because of a birth defect, the little Ohio boy’s airway kept collapsing, causing his breathing to stop and often his heart, too. Doctors in Michigan had been researching artificial airway splints but had not implanted one in a patient yet. Continue reading "3-D Printing Saves the Life of an Ohio Boy" at... Birthright Keeps $40M Budget After Sheldon Adelson Plea as Austerity BitesSheldon Adelson asked for a meeting, and Yair Lapid consented. Adelson’s purpose in asking for the meeting was to ensure that Lapid would not cut government support to the Birthright program — which totals $40 million per year — as part of the budget cuts. Click here for the rest of the article...Does London Meat Cleaver Attack on British Soldier Pose Danger to Jews?British Jews are no more at risk from terrorism than they were before the slaying of a British soldier by suspected terrorists, British Jewry’s security unit said. Click here for the rest of the article...A Survivor and His Son: A Poignant Graduation StoryA few friends/readers have sent me along this essay that ran in the Times earlier this week about the impact a man’s graduation from medical school had on his father, an Auschwitz survivor. Here’s the set-up: Dad was a fruit peddler in Denver: Max’s Mobile Market. Awestruck is an understatement for his reaction to New York. The World Trade Center, Statue of Liberty, Broadway and a fruit stand on nearly every corner. He was the most brilliant fruit peddler in the history of fruit peddling, the smartest man I ever knew. Deprived of a high school education when the Nazis raided his town of Klodowa, he came to America years later as an apprehensive, thickly accented refugee from the unspeakable horrors of Europe. Despite many years in America, the emotional scars were still there. He had a sense of inferiority and was intimidated by those around him who had an education. He was always socially self-conscious, acutely afraid of standing out for his lack of accomplishments. Within his circle of family and friends, dad was proud of who he was and what he had overcome. We knew he was proud of us, too. My journalist-to-be brother and I had chosen professions dad respected and admired. But outside my father’s inner circle, he was introverted, stoic, reserved. He would withdraw in the company of those who didn’t have to make their livelihoods on a fruit truck, and always regarded himself as the immigrant in the room. Continue reading "A Survivor and His Son: A Poignant Graduation Story " at... Kerry Meets Both Sides in New Mideast Peace PushSecretary of State John Kerry held separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials on Thursday and acknowledged there was considerable scepticism that the two sides would resume peace negotiations. Click here for the rest of the article... |
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