Short Takes

Taking A Crack At Mah Jong

06/07/2002 | by Steve Lipman | Staff Writer

What happens when East meets West?
When they meet on the Lower East Side, they play mah jong. Or mah jongg.
About 700 participants in the second annual Egg Rolls & Egg Creams Block Party, sponsored by the Eldridge Street Project, learned on Sunday that the game has two spellings. And two sets of rules.
"The Western version has one 'g.' The Chinese spell it with two," says Rebecca Faulkner, a staff member at the project, whose aunt, Sheila Solomon, right, came from upstate Suffern to try her hand at the tiles game.

Tolerance On Ice

06/07/2002 | by Steve Lipman | Staff Writer

It was a usual scene in a locker room at the Chelsea Piers hockey rink Sunday morning. Two teenagers sat next to each other, removing their pads and uniforms, discussing a late-game lapse that allowed the only goal surrendered in their team's 9-1 victory.
But something was unusual: One of the players was an Orthodox Jew, a student at the Ramaz day school on the Upper East Side; his teammate was black, a Catholic who studies cross town at St. Agnes Boys High School.

Keyes Doesn't Fit

06/07/2002 | by Steve Lipman | Staff Writer

Some MSNBC viewers want to throw away the Keyes.
Arab Americans and other critics of Israeli policies who are fed up with the staunchly pro-Israel stance of Alan Keyes have started an on-line petition drive to get the talk-show host and former presidential candidate (or his views) off NBC's news channel.
MSNBC learned about the campaign from Keyes supporters, not his detractors.

Politics From The Pulpit

06/07/2002 | BY Steve Lipman | Staff Writer

In a New Jersey synagogue last Shabbat, a rabbi urged his congregants to attend a local fund-raising event for Rep. Tom DeLay, conservative Republican and House majority whip.
In a Riverdale shul, a rabbi lauded the efforts of City Councilman Oliver Koppell, who introduced a bill to brand the Palestinian Authority a terrorist organization.

Lawyers' Fee Fight Goes On

05/31/2002 | Stewart Ain | Staff Writer

The battle over lawyers' fees in the $1.25 billion Swiss bank settlement with Holocaust survivors and their heirs has taken yet another turn: a Florida lawyer is petitioning the court for $3.6 million, a figure a fellow lawyer in the case calls "shocking."

Voice Of A Generation

05/31/2002 | by Steve Lipman | Staff Writer

New Voices was a new experience for Marita Gringaus.
The Odessa native, an economics major at Arizona State University, was introduced to the independent Jewish student magazine at the United Jewish Communities’ 2001 General Assembly in Chicago. There she met Daniel Treiman, now the publication’s outgoing editor, at a “Do The Write Thing” session for aspiring Jewish journalists. Later she wrote an article about a seder she attended in Nepal, and became a regular reader.