Local News
The College of Jewish Studies will welcome former Binghamtonian Eli
(Eliyahu) Groner back to his hometown on Thursday, May 23, at 7:30 pm,
when he will present the talk “The Secret Sauce to a Start-Up Nation?
How Israeli Innovation Created a Miracle in the Desert.” The program
will mark the first of two this spring recognizing the 65th anniversary
of the establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948. The program
will be held at the Jewish Community Center, 500 Clubhouse Rd., Vestal.
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Israel News
DAKAR, Senegal (JTA) – Struggling to be heard over a flock of bleating
sheep, Israel’s ambassador to Senegal invited a crowd of impoverished
Muslims to help themselves to about 100 sacrificial animals that the
embassy corralled at a dusty community center here.
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National News
(JTA) – The Jews of Corpus Christi knew a decade ago they had to act
fast to save their two synagogues. With at most 1,000 Jews left in the
Texas town and only 60 families making up its membership, the
60-year-old Conservative synagogue was in shaky financial shape. So in
2005, B’nai Israel Synagogue merged with Temple Beth El, a Reform shul,
to form Congregation Beth Israel, combining customs and sharing sacred
spaces to preserve Jewish life in an area that saw its heyday around
World War II.
“How people perished in the ghetto – that I understand; what I cannot
understand is how they lived there,” writes Second World War refugee and
esteemed Yiddish poet, Chaim Grade. When Canadian author Menachem
Kaiser arrived in Vilnius two years ago to begin a Fulbright Scholarship
focused on Holocaust research, he observed firsthand the stark reality
behind Grade’s statement. “There is literally no trace of the ghetto
left in Vilnius,” Kaiser tells JNS.org. “Hardly even any clues left
behind.”
Chaya Appel-Fishman hatched the idea for a network of Jewish
businesswomen at age 16, when she rented a college campus and created a
conglomerate of creative arts programs with 120 participants and a
20-person staff. “I wanted mentors who could give me advice and deal
with my religious needs,” she recalls. “And many women reached out to me
for support, asking me ‘How did I do it?’”
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Features
Becoming a reviewer has made me a better reader. Instead of dismissing
works I don’t enjoy, I now analyze why they didn’t appeal to me: Is it
something personal, for example, did a character or plot line trouble
me? Does the author’s prose or writing style enhance the telling of the
story for me or distract from it? Would other readers relish the book
even if I didn’t find it to my taste? Two recent novels – “The
Middlesteins” by Jami Attenberg (Grand Central Publishing) and “A Town
of Empty Rooms” by Karen E. Bender (Counterpoint) – left me pondering my
initial reactions. Why did one unexpectedly charm me while the other
left me unsatisfied, even though I admired the author’s prose and
psychological insights?
TEL AVIV (JTA) – Pascale Bercovitch has a firm handshake and a ready
smile. She’s hard to keep up with as she takes an elevator to a café on
the ground floor of her gym in northern Tel Aviv and talks about her
hopes to compete in 2016 in Rio De Janeiro. It’s easy to forget that
she’s 45 years old and has no legs.
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Opinion
In a recent, exhaustive study of antisemitism, the German scholar
Clemens Heni explains the significance for Christian theology of the
story of Ahasver, a Jewish shoemaker in Jerusalem who, legend has it,
refused Jesus a resting place as he made his way to Golgotha bearing the
cross on his back. Ahasver’s punishment, says Heni, was to wander the
world for eternity, an image that formed the basis for what the Nazis
famously called “der ewige Jude” – “the eternal Jew.”
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