Short Takes

Ramon Fires Back On Pluralism

10/08/1999 | by Lawrence Cohler-Esses | Staff Writer

Haim Ramon says he wants to make one thing perfectly clear:

“I am a pluralist,” the Israeli cabinet minister told The Jewish Week repeatedly in a phone interview Tuesday. After reading others’ account of his remarks at a Sept. 30 meeting with dovish American Jewish activists, he denounced them as “lies.” The private meeting was reported on the front page of last week’s Jewish Week.

Jews Step Into ‘Dung’ Wars

10/01/1999 | by Lawrence Cohler-Esses  | Staff Writer

Next time, it could be a Sefer Torah with elephant dung dabbed on it.

That vision is what the head of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations says motivated him to denounce the “Sensation” exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art this week and, as he said in a press release, “support those civic leaders who have questioned whether public funds should support this exhibition.”

Vanished Iranian Jews Now Adding To Crisis

08/27/1999 | by Lawrence Cohler-Esses | Staff Writer

Even as efforts continue to gain freedom for 13 Iranian Jews jailed by their government on suspicion of spying, new information is surfacing about 11 other Jews who vanished while attempting to flee Iran illegally between 1994 and 1997.

The information, some of which emerged at a public meeting in Los Angeles last month, is threatening to further fracture an Iranian Jewish community in the United States caught between the impulse to protest, and to stick to silent diplomacy in its efforts to help imperiled brethren.

Holocaust Museum’s Management Woes

08/20/1999 | by Lawrence Cohler-Esses | Staff Writer

Millions flock each year to The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, making its exhibitions on systematic, state-sponsored mass murder the surprise success of the national Mall.

But according to Sheldon S. Cohen, the chair of a committee that has just finished a major study of the museum’s governance, this popular acclaim masks serious problems behind the scenes.

Reversal Of Fortune

08/20/1999 | by Lawrence Cohler-Esses  | Staff Writer

New York State Assemblyman and former kingmaker Dov Hikind survived a criminal indictment and massive legal fees — and still came out in the black to the tune of $400,000, thanks in part to a bang-up legal defense fund.

Now, Noach Dear, his longtime rival for top Orthodox pol in Brooklyn, has been hit hard, thanks to problems he has had with federal campaign finance law.

An Anthem For Kosovo

04/30/1999 | by Lawrence Cohler-Esses | Staff Writer

A vibrato chord. A splash of cymbal. And then a drum beat and bass introduce a spooky voice with a warning: The malicious gossip and envious backbiting of “normal” life, sings Mark Star, is but the tip of human darkness; just beneath this lie horrors such as the murders and mass ethnic expulsions now taking place in Kosovo.