New York News

Lift Every Voice

05/06/1998 | Jonathan Mark | Associate Editor

New York, city of the big voices, will sing a little louder next week as 450 Conservative cantors, the largest body of hazzanim in the world, celebrate their 50th anniversary here with a five-day convention and festival of what the cantors call “Jewish soul music.

Agudah Head’s Death Mourned By Haredim

05/02/1998 | by ADAM DICKTER and JONATHAN MARK | Staff Writers

As Agudath Israel of America mourned the death of its longtime leader and visionary Rabbi Moshe Sherer this week, officials of the organization put off for now any discussion of who will inherit the reins of the influential, ultra-Orthodox umbrella group.

To Be Young And In Love With Israel

05/01/1998 | Jonathan Mark | Associate Editor

Just as Yom HaShoah is reason to consider that Holocaust survivors are slipping away from us, along with their first-person stories that suffer in the retelling, Yom Ha’Atzmaut is equal reason to consider that the Jews who remember Israel’s birth and infancy are also fewer and fleeting.Let others talk about Israel’s anniversary with the removed sophistication of academics and professionals. I’d rather talk to grandmothers.

Mixed Messages On Blacks And Jews

05/01/1998 | by ADAM DICKTER | Staff Writer

A majority of blacks agree with Jews that anti-Semitism is a problem in the African-American community, according to a national poll released this week.
But in a seemingly contradictory finding, 48.8 percent of blacks gave a “favorable” rating to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has a long history of comments and theories considered by Jewish leaders to be anti-Semitic.
The poll, commissioned by the New York-based Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, contains several mixed messages about the often polarized groups.

Aftermath Of The Cato Visit

05/01/1998 | by ADAM DICKTER | Staff Writer

Critics may dismiss last week’s meeting between a small group of Jewish leaders and Carmel Cato as a “good photo op,” but Howard Teich, who facilitated the meeting, insists that was the last thing on his mind.

Rough Start For Conversion Institute

05/01/1998 | by Eric J. Greenberg | Staff Writer

Talk about your rocky starts. Israel’s new multi-denominational committee to create a joint religious conversion institute held its first board meeting Monday, but things immediately went wrong.
As an act of protest, the Conservative movement refused to send its official representative to the government-sponsored panel.