Adam Dickter's blog

If you work in Jewish journalism long enough, certain stories begin to look like Mad Libs: Blocks of fixed text in which only the particulars are rearranged.

Examples: ______ calls for the release of Jonathan Pollard.   ________'s remarks about Hitler cause an uproar.

 _________'s  proposed budget cuts are a disaster for Jewish social service agencies. Mayor/Gov./Sen. _______ (or all of the above) to visit Israel as election nears. 

Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman has a fascinating in-depth piece in today's New York Times Magazine exploring the notoriously lopsided Gilad Shalit/terrorist trade, suggesting that the painful questions raised by the deal aren't going away any time soon.

Many Jewish celebrities tend to get more involved in Jewish causes as they get older, and that includes Ed Asner, who, at 81, was a co-host at Monday night’s benefit for the Jewish Partisans Education Foundation.

I'm keeping up pretty well with my obligation during the mourning period for my mother to pray with a minyan three times a day. But not so much with the tradition of leading the prayer service.

Maybe tradition is too liberal a word, since those in mourning are called "chiyuvim," or obligated ones, and are given priority to serve as chazan, except during Shabbat and holidays, when the service is more rejoicing.

Wearing a yarmulke in New York City, as I did regularly as a kid and young adult, is not just an expression of pride and faith, but, as I often found, also an invitation for loudmouth anti-Semites to crawl out from under their rocks.

Growing up in Bensonhurst and later Flatbush, I was treated to some classic encounters: Being wished "Happy Hannukah" at all times of the year. A kid on a bicycle calling me and my brother a term that rhymes with "trucking blues." 

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver wants to use access to business in the Empire State as leverage to keep companies from doing business with Ahmadinejad's Iran.

Today, the Manhattan Democrat announced what he called landmark legislation that would prevent not just Albany but municipal governments here from any contracts with companies with ties to Tehran. He cited the recent suspected attempt by the Iranian government to hatch a terror plot that, officials said, may have involved an attack on the Israeli and Saudi embassies here.

It's not often that a politician gets to bring home a constituent who had been imprisoned in an unstable Arab country. But JTA reports that's just what Queens and Long Island Rep. Gary Ackerman is set to do.

The carnation-sporting Democrat, who has been in office as long as anyone can remember, went to Israel late Wednesday to bring home Ilan Grapel, the dual Israel-American citizen held under nebulous circumstances in Egypt, where what passes for a government has accused him of being a spy.

Jewish Week online columnist  Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz has drawn extensive feedback from commenters on this week’s edition of “Street Torah,”  in which he deals with the highly controversial issue of gun control.

People who have guns and/or support the right to own them get very easily worked up whenever you broach the topic of taking them away through legislation. There is a reasonable argument to be made on both sides of this hot-button topic.

A little post-holidays humor. (Very little, some would say.)

Top 10 Signs You've Spent Too Much Time In Shul

10. Show up to work with tallis on.

 9.  Before opening garage door, a voice in your head says “chai dollar psichin …”

 8. Punctuate coworkers' presentations with “baruch hu baruch shemo”

 7. Mistakenly hand train conductor a dollar for the pushka.

 6. Instinctively start counting people when you enter room.

There will be endless debates about whether it's right, or smart, to exchange more than 1,000 people who want to destroy Israel for the life of one Israeli soldier. Let those debates go on, once Gilad Shalit is home. Those of us who had no say in the painful decision should, God willing, enjoy the spectacle of this long-suffering pawn finally reuniting with his family and, at 25, trying to regain his life, as we have been praying for him to do for more than five years.