Quotation

Surrounded by dustily stocked bookshelves, antique lamps and floral artistic screens, a jazz saxophonist jammed along with his ensemble for a small crowd that straggled in and out of a dimly lit East Village basement this past Monday night. 

No, this wasn’t your ordinary subterranean jazz haunt.

The Jewish community of Nashville, largely unscathed by this week’s flooding of the Cumberland River banks, is assisting displaced members of the Jewish and wider community, Jewish leaders report.

(JTA) — With a federal judge expected to issue a sentence in his case later this month, former kosher meatpacking executive Sholom Rubashkin expressed regret for his actions last week in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Linda Reade reportedly indicated that she will issue her ruling May 27.

At least 10 witnesses spoke on Rubashkin’s behalf, including a psychiatrist who interviewed him in jail. The psychiatrist said Rubashkin expressed regret for the harm he had caused himself and others, the Des Moines Register reported.

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- When Elie Wiesel says it's all kosher, it's good.

For now, anyway.

President Obama capped an intensive two weeks of administration make-nice with Israeli officials and the American Jewish community by hosting Wiesel, the Nobel peace laureate and Holocaust memoirist, for lunch at the White House.

"It was a good kosher lunch," was the first thing Wiesel pronounced, emerging from the White House to a gaggle of reporters.

And not just the food.