New York News

Making A Better Place

07/01/1998 | by Stewart Ain | Staff Writer

With her 10-year-old son at her side, a disabled widow from Long Beach told a hushed group of 500 UJA-Federation lay and professional leaders that the local Jewish community center has "been there for us in the very darkest of times."
"I have an immune disease called fibromyalga," explained Harriet Cohen, 46, at the annual Long Island General Assembly in Roslyn, which provides UJA-Federation-funded organizations an opportunity to display their activities.

Beyond The Great Divide

06/26/1998 | Jonathan Mark | Associate Publisher

One of the key religious epiphanies is that we live in a world of illusions; not everything is as it seems. With all the justified emphasis on denominational feuds, each of the denominational publications have other things on their mind that are worth sharing across the Jewish Mason-Dixon lines.Jewish Action (Summer), the magazine of the Orthodox Union looks at the OU’s centennial, essentially Orthodoxy’s centennial in the United States.

Protecting ‘The Underdogs’

06/26/1998 | by Stewart Ain | Staff Writer

A $17,000 grant to provide counseling and vocational training to women victims of domestic violence was one of two gifts awarded last week by the 3-year-old Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York. The foundation, which itself just received a $500,000 grant from UJA-Federation to hire clerical staff and cover promotional expenses, also presented a $25,000 check to the New York Legal Assistance Group. The goal of both grants is to educate low-income Jewish women so they can become economically self-sufficient and reduce their dependence on welfare programs.

Rabbis Create Cemetery Task Force

06/26/1998 | by Stewart Ain | Staff Writer

The New York Board of Rabbis has agreed to a union request to help resolve the 11-week-old strike and lockout of 340 cemetery workers at eight area Jewish cemeteries. At the same time, the rabbis said they hoped to resolve longstanding problems their congregants have encountered over the years at cemeteries.

Is SUPERMAN ‘Judenrein?’

06/26/1998 | by Eric J. Greenberg | Staff Writer

In his latest adventure, Superman travels back in time to face the horrors of the Holocaust firsthand. But nowhere in this special comic-book story is the word Jew mentioned. In fact, editors at DC Comics, a division of Time Warner Entertainment Co., deleted “Jewish” from the story entirely, says Superman writer-artist Jon Bogdanove.
“They didn’t want me to use the word Jewish,” Bogdanove says. “They wanted to avoid using buzz words.”

Politics Or Civics?

06/26/1998 | by Lawrence Cohler-Esses | Staff Writer

With testimony from Dov Hikind’s own former chief of staff, prosecutors this week sought to fortify their claim that the assemblyman used government funds from Brooklyn’s largest Jewish community council as a kind of private cash reserve for political and personal needs.

Jeff Reznik, Hikind’s chief of staff between 1993 and 1995, testified Monday that Hikind helped him get a job with an affiliate of the Council of Jewish Organizations of Boro Park after he told Hikind his staff salary of about $30,000 per year was insufficient.