August 2011

Sign here. That is what Jewish organizations across the country are asking people to do in e-mails and up-close-and-personal appeals in advance of next month’s opening of the United Nations General Assembly. In this area,...

In the wake of the economic downturn three years ago, many people in our area turned to local Jewish social service agencies for help, according to those agencies’ directors. Last week, as stock markets seesawed wildly, those same...

Mithal al-Alusi, human rights leader and former Iraqi Parliamentarian, contacted me last weekend to convey his thoughts about the dire situation for proponents of human rights and liberal values in Iraq. He also urged President...

Yitzhak Zahavy is competing this Sunday in a grueling sports event because he can. He can, he says, because three of his comrades gave their lives to save his. He is competing to honor them.

Zahavy, who was born in Rhode Island, moved to...

More than 100 reportedly unarmed civilians in the Syrian city of Hama have died at the hands of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces since the start of Ramadan on Sunday in a crackdown some in the media have labeled the “Ramadan...

The world sparkles a bit less brightly this week with the passing of a true individual. Last Thursday August 4, Walter Monheit, bon vivant and man for all seasons, died. He was 85. Michael Musto of the Village Voice eulogized him this week...