Marissa Brostoff
By Marissa Brostoff
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News William Berkowitz, 83, Leading New York Rabbi
Rabbi William Berkowitz, a longtime spiritual leader of a major New York City synagogue, died February 3. He was 83. Berkowitz served as senior rabbi at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun between 1950 and 1984. He was also well-known for creating the Dialogue Forum, an innovative series of public conversations with such figures as Martin Luther King,…
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Culture Alone With a Secret
An Israeli military plane lands in a bleak African field. Huddled masses of Ethiopian Jews furtively board the plane before it takes off again. The camera shifts to the face of one terrified boy. A haunting soprano melody provides the soundtrack. From these early moments in “Live and Become,” a film by Romanian director Radu…
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News One Hundred Years Later, Still Talking
One hundred years ago, the great classical Yiddish writer I.L. Peretz declared Yiddish the national Jewish language, a tongue and a culture that had transcended the boundaries of the nation-state. “The folk, not the nation-state, is the modern concept! The people, not the Fatherland!” Peretz proclaimed at the First Conference for the Yiddish Language, held…
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News Diamond Mogul Receives Angry Valentine
JDate users scouring the Jewish dating Web site in anticipation of Valentine’s Day may have found a surprising match. Lev Leviev, the controversial Israeli diamond mogul, had appeared to register a profile on the site, including such information as, “in my free time, I enjoy: Exploitation, Profiteering, Union-Busting, and Macrame.” The JDate profile was one…
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Breaking News SUPER TUESDAY: Obama’s Jewish Neighbors
Barack Obama may have a deadlock on at least one segment of the Jewish community: his neighbors. KAM Isaiah Israel, the oldest synagogue in Chicago, is directly across the street from Obama’s house. Members of KAM, a large Reform synagogue, report having seen the Illinois senator engaged in mundane activities around their Hyde Park neighborhood,…
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Breaking News SUPER TUESDAY: Split Personalities
There has been plenty of talk about families splitting their votes on Tuesday’s primary choices, but what about individuals doing the same with their own votes? Meet Leslie Carroll. After walking out of her polling place on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Carroll explained how she dealt with her internal conflict. “The way it works here…
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News Novel Illuminates Memories of Lost Shtetl
In 2002, an unknown young writer named Jonathan Safran Foer published his first novel, “Everything Is Illuminated.” The book, a fictionalized account of a young man’s search for his grandfather’s Ukrainian shtetl, was released to wild critical acclaim, propelling the title to the top of best-seller lists and its author to instant literary fame. Less…
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Israel News Alan Dershowitz’s Musical Endeavors
Alan Dershowitz may have finally found a vocation that allows him to make more noise than he does as a celebrity lawyer, professor at Harvard Law School and prolific author. His new calling? Opera. “This is my current retirement project,” Dershowitz told The Shmooze. “It’s the only one without a deadline except the one God…
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