Gabrielle Birkner
By Gabrielle Birkner
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News Haiti’s Jewish Remnant Keeps the Faith and Lends a Hand Amid the Crisis
Each year on Yom Kippur, Rudolph Dana locks himself in his Pétionville, Haiti, home — protected by guard dogs and security personnel — and passes the Day of Atonement fasting, praying and reciting the traditional liturgy of repentance and forgiveness. Up until about 10 years ago, Haiti’s tiny Jewish community would gather in a home…
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Life Digest: Patenting Genes, Sara Netanyahu’s Tsuris
The Sisterhood Digest: • Israeli soldiers, in Haiti to assist victims of last week’s catastrophic earthquake, delivered a healthy baby, over the weekend, in a makeshift hospital that the Israel Defense Forces set up on a Port-au-Prince athletic field. The baby’s mother reportedly plans to name her newborn son “Israel.” • As Myriad Genetics prepares…
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Life Haiti’s Jewish Remnant
Haiti, the island nation suffering terribly in the wake of the catastrophic January 12 earthquake, is home to a tiny Jewish remnant. According to Chabad.org, the number of Jewish residents is about 25, but Larry Luxner — in this piece for JTA, in 2004 — wrote that the the Jewish population could be as high…
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Life Did Elizabeth Edwards’ Zaftig Figure Play Into Her Saintly Image?
Elizabeth Edwards’ appearance, specifically her zaftig figure, may have played into her saintly reputation, which is only now taking a beating in the wake of the publication of John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s “Game Change.” In this delicious excerpt, published in New York magazine, Heilemann and Halperin write: Even before the cancer, she was among…
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Life Digest: Abortions Spike Among Haredi
The Sisterhood Digest: • The number of legal abortions in Israel has declined 10% since 2000, the Jerusalem Post, citing Health Ministry statistics, reports — even as Ynet reports that abortions among ultra-Orthodox women in Israel have been on the rise since the beginning of the financial crisis. In Israel, abortions are permitted if they…
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Culture Where Jewish Women Converse (on Television)
The Sisterhood blog is one forum in which Jewish women of different ages, denominations and political ideologies can debate issues of communal importance. “The Salon,” produced by The Jewish Channel and hosted by Forward editor Jane Eisner with media critic Rachel Sklar, is another. In this newly available episode, the panel — made up of…
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News Reel Life Inside the Warsaw Ghetto
Just months before the Nazis all but emptied the Warsaw Ghetto — sending some 300,000 of its residents to perish at Treblinka — they sent camera-wielding soldiers to capture the increasingly imperiled Jewish community within the ghetto walls. After 30 days of filming in May 1942, the soldiers packed up their equipment; their 62-minute film…
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Life Cartoon Shows Sen. Lieberman Killing Santa
No one is accusing Sen. Lieberman of Christ-killing. Santa-killing, well, that’s a different story. See Bob Englehart’s recent Hartford Courant cartoon here.
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