the Jewish Week

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

In 1978, my family made aliyah.

At least it felt that way. After growing up in an area of Bensonhurst with a bare-bones Jewish community, where my brother and I sometimes faced anti-Semitism on the streets and the idea of a kosher restaurant seemed like something out of a dream, I found myself at age 12 in Midwood, the most Jewish part of Flatbush.

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Here’s an update on an earlier item on the three Americans arrested and detained by Iran and the way the inaccurate story that one of them was a yeshiva student and Jewish Week writer spread across the Internet.

One of the Web sites that spread the story was DEBKAfile.com, which fashions itself a source of in-depth intelligence and security information, with a focus on the Middle East.

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

You can’t say the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) isn’t doing its part for their party’s embattled  health care reform legislation  – or, as the Obama administration has rebranded it, health insurance reform.

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

I’m a huge fan of the Internet – in fact, it’s a large part of my job.  Obviously,  I’m a blogger, and regard blogging as an essential ingredient in the newspaper of tomorrow.

But I’m also alarmed at how easily distortions and mistakes, reported as “news” by bloggers and disseminated to vast, worldwide audiences that uncritically accept their outpourings,  become indelible parts of the news background.

Monday, August 10th, 2009

One sure sign a politician is laying the groundwork for a future presidential bid is a sudden yearning for Israel travel.  So it must be for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee,  who will be visiting Israel next week.

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Like many in our community, I’ve been transfixed by the dramatic FBI arrests in New Jersey that netted prominent rabbis as well as mayors, city council presidents and other officials.

It’s both titillating and scary; first Bernie Madoff, now this.  There haven’t been so many high-profile Jewish baddies since Leopold and Loeb.

And this one looks huge, involving as it does some of the leading figures in the Syrian Jewish community, money laundering and trafficking in human organs.