United States

It is painful to see the hurt of my non-Orthodox friends as they react to the [Knesset conversion] bill proposed by Member of Knesset David Rotem (“MK, Non-Orthodox Clash On Conversions,” May 7). I have a simple suggestion that may reduce these problems in the future.

Brandeis newspaper editors Rebecca Blady and Hillel Buechler sensitively and articulately inform us that the majority of Brandeis students who oppose Ambassador Michael Oren as commencement speaker do so on the grounds that he will alienate a segment of the Brandeis community who “believe Israel’s accomplishments are dwarfed by its moral deficiencies” — a polite way of saying they question Israel’s right to exist — but that the students, themselves, do not generally share those views (“Israel Ambassador Wrong For Commencement,” Opinion, May 21

Israeli leaders have reacted harshly to a Palestinian boycott launched last Tuesday against products made in Israeli West Bank settlements, threatening to impose higher taxes on Palestinian-made goods and possibly blocking cash donations from European nations.

“It is unacceptable that the Palestinians are waging an economic war against us with the sense that everything is allowed,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted as telling a meeting of his Likud Party Monday.

 As she awaits her husband’s sentencing next Thursday for federal bank fraud, Leah Rubashkin described him as a man who “always had a hard time” running the family’s kosher slaughterhouse and “did everything he could to keep all the bills paid.”

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Depending on your view of the Middle East and the Obama administration, Aaron David Miller is either a hero or a turncoat.

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- If you tell the rabbis, they will spread the word.

That was the thinking behind two intimate White House meetings -- the second of which took place on Thursday -- with a carefully selected slate of 15 rabbis from across the country and representing the Orthodox, Reform and Conservative streams.

Over lunch several years ago, across a table at a Manhattan kosher restaurant from a middle-aged rabbi with a graying beard, large knit kipa and critical opinions about the spiritual life of most American Jews, I told my guest to ‘fess up.

“You can tell me the truth,” I said to Rabbi David Forman. “You’re really an Orthodox rabbi.”

‘The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson” by Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman (Princeton University Press) fills a considerable void in the biography of one of the towering religious figures of the 20th century. But on reading it, one wonders whether the object of the biography is the same Lubavitcher Rebbe the world came to know and admire for pioneering Jewish outreach in the modern age and for being arguably the figure most responsible for the global resurgence in Jewish affiliation.