This week’s editorial deals with recent event in Europe — a subject that’s usually not as touchy, in terms of vituperative feedback from readers, as, say, Israel. The big news this week was about the victory of French Socialist Party presidential candidate François Hollande, who edged out Nicholas Sarkozy — and ended a [...]

The American Jewish World is a media sponsor for this year’s Twin Cities 64th Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) Celebration. The organized Jewish communities on both sides of the Mississippi River have joined forces, along with a host of synagogues, Jewish agencies and groups, for events on Sunday, April 29, including a solidarity [...]

Everyone has his or her favorite part of the seder — apart from the meal. Polling my household, votes were cast for the “Hillel sandwich,” the Four Questions and singing “Dayenu.”
How about the Ten Plagues, a climactic moment in the telling of the renowned story of the exodus?
“These are the ten plagues [...]

A cartoon by Paul Noth in the new issue of The New Yorker shows Moses leading the Israelites through the Sea of Reeds. Our illustrious ancestor has split the water; he holds a staff in his raised hand, as he leads a long column of his people fleeing Egypt. Immediately behind Moses, at [...]

Environmental groups in the United States launched an urgent campaign early this week to stop the U.S. Senate from fast-tracking approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, with an amendment to the transportation bill. TransCanada, a Canadian-based energy firm, needs State Department approval to construct the pipeline, which would carry crude oil (diluted bitumen) [...]

In one of the more bizarre stories of recent years, the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times — a small Anglo-Jewish newspaper like this one — wrote an editorial in the paper’s Jan. 13 edition promulgating the Israeli assassination of President Barack Obama.
A JTA story, which appears on Page 3 of [...]

Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate, was in the news last week. Adelson, a billionaire who is the largest donor to Birthright Israel and a prominent contributor to other Jewish causes, reportedly contributed $5 million to Winning Our Future, the pro-Newt Gingrich “super PAC.”
The super PAC, a new breed of political action [...]

Many Americans know about Rosa Parks, who became the “mother of the modern-day civil rights movement,” when she refused to surrender her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery, Ala., bus, on Dec. 1, 1955. Parks’ arrest sparked the 13-month Montgomery bus boycott, which led to the Supreme Court ruling that [...]

In the newspaper business, you never know which story will strike a nerve, provoke controversy among readers. A seemingly inflammatory article is published without a peep from readers; and then an apparently innocuous item sparks a rash of contending phone calls, letters and e-mails.
The Dec. 9 Hanuka special edition, for example, featured the [...]