Short Takes

Feeling The Church's Pain

05/03/2002 | by Eric J. Greenberg | Staff Writer

As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops gets set to meet next month in Dallas to hammer out a policy on how to deal with priests who sexually abuse children, one Long Island rabbi is offering his help and empathy.

"We in the Jewish community feel the pain of the Catholic Church," said Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin of The Community Synagogue in Port Washington, L.I., and a vice president of the Long Island Board of Rabbis.

Remembering Barbie's Jewish Mother

05/03/2002 | by Eric J. Greenberg | Staff Writer

Ruth Moskowitz was the youngest of 10 children born to Polish-Jewish immigrant parents Jacob and Ida. Little did they imagine that their baby daughter would grow up to create one of America's most popular icons.
As the creator of the Barbie doll and co-founder of the Mattel Toy Corp., Ruth became one of the country's most enterprising and powerful businesswomen.

JCCs And The Gender Pay Gap

04/26/2002 | by Steve Lipman | Staff Writer

If you go to your local Jewish community center, the employees you meet there are more involved in Jewish life and more likely to stay at their job than their counterparts in recent decades.
But if the employee you meet is a woman, she probably earns a smaller salary than a man in a comparable position.
Those are among the findings of “Centering on Professionals: The 2001 Study of JCC Personnel in North America,” a study of some 1,800 JCC staffers released this week by the Florence G. Heller-JCC Association Research Center.

Genealogy An On-Line Hit

04/26/2002 | by Steve Lipman | Staff Writer

What a difference a "k" makes.
Gary Mokotoff, a Jewish genealogist by vocation and avocation, had over the last 22 years created a family tree spanning seven generations and 1,000 names. He had traced the history of relatives, knew where many of them lived and what kind of lives they lived. But there were some gaps in his personal roots research: like details about the arrival at Ellis Island of his great-grandparents from Poland on the eve of World War I.

Mayor Snubs Palestinians At Gracie Mansion Gala

04/19/2002 | by Adam Dickter | Staff Writer

Refusing to "glorify" an "organization that uses violence," Mayor Michael Bloomberg excluded diplomats from the Palestinian Authority from a Gracie Mansion concert recital Tuesday.
"Given the fact that the mayor has been outspoken in his criticism of both [Yasir] Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, he felt the city should not be glorifying an organization that uses violence as a political tool," said Bloomberg spokesman Ed Skyler.