‘A History of the Jews in the Modern World’:
The Best of Times?

Nearly all Jewish historians typically treat the modern age as the best of times and the worst of times — and these seemingly mutually exclusive propositions are both, in one way or another, true. Beginning in the late 18th century with the emancipation conferred by the French Revolution, no other group in the West has benefited so much from modernity, with its emphasis on education, social mobility and individual success. Jews worldwide increasingly saw civic and political freedom as inevitable, as part of the contemporary world’s largess. The exemplars of the modern age are disproportionately Jews: the Rothschilds, Marx, Einstein, Freud, Kafka and George Soros.

Crown Heights spurs interest in central Brooklyn

Once an isolated Brooklyn enclave that only received attention for its ethnic tensions and their ugly aftermaths, Crown Heights is on the cusp of a real estate revival.

The 1991 riots between the neighborhood’s Orthodox Jews and Caribbean- and African-American residents belong to another century. Today, brokers say Crown Heights feels much like Harlem seven years ago, just before it established itself as the fastest-growing section of Manhattan.

Israel gives into US pressure
Halts Plan to Add Homes Near Maale Adumim

Israel has bowed to the United States and frozen a much-criticized plan to add 3,500 new housing units near a large West Bank settlement called Maale Adumim, according to Ehud Olmert, a close ally of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his vice prime minister.

But Mr. Olmert’s comments, made in an interview published today in The Jerusalem Post, were more an indication of political repositioning in Israel’s heated right-wing political competition than any enunciation of new policy. Israel has made it clear many times that any building near Maale Adumim, in the development area known as E-1, would not begin for at least two to three years.

New Orleans Rabbi Evacuates To Gainesville

In the days since Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast, a New Orleans rabbi has been taking refuge at a Jewish center in Gainesville, communicating with friends and family through the Internet and cell phone text messages.

The rabbi, Yochanan Rivkin of Chabad at Tulane University, left New Orleans with his wife early Sunday afternoon, before the deadly storm hit. The drive eastward to Tallahassee was more than double the six hours it normally takes; the rabbi arrived at Gainesville’s Lubavitch Jewish Center on Monday morning.

Weiner Enters Fray Over PA Frozen Assets

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn), a candidate for mayor of New York City, has entered the battle over Palestinian Authority assets frozen as the result of a lawsuit by the family of terror victims. Last week Weiner filed a “friend of the court” brief with US District Court in White Plains on behalf of the family of Yaron Ungar, an American citizen killed along with his wife Efrat by Hamas terrorists in 1996.

Weiner’s brief supports a request by the Unger family for seizure and sale of the PLO’s UN mission in Manhattan, and for the funds from the sale to be used to pay part of a $116 million judgment against the PA and the PLO in the case. The Palestinian groups are refusing to pay; an appellate judge has found them both in default. The New York case is just one front in a broader legal battle over the frozen assets.

Center serves as local haven for hurricane victims

As the effects of Hurricane Katrina become more serious with each day that passes, the Lubavitch-Chabad Jewish Center in Gainesville is working to keep the hope and faith alive.

Tulane University’s Chabad Director Rabbi Yochanan Rivkin, who left New Orleans last week with his wife and four children, created a temporary command post at the center, through which hurricane survivors can communicate with relatives and find nearby relief centers.

Rivkin and Rabbi Berl Goldman, director of the center, led a small prayer service Wednesday evening for those still in New Orleans. It began, “Deliver me, O God, for the waters have reached unto my soul.”

Slow motion disaster, one agonizing day at a time

This much the rabbi knows. As of Wednesday morning, his sister, brother-in-law and their seven children were alive after spending two days on the second floor of their flooded home in suburban New Orleans.

Everything else is uncertain.

“They’re safe for now, thank God,” said Rabbi Yisroel Spalter of the Chabad Lubavitch synagogue in Weston. “But I’m very concerned.”

After two days of agonizing worry, Spalter feared the worst.

“The phones were dead, the cell phones were dead,” Spalter said.

Lubavitch Establishes Hurricane Relief Fund

Lubavitch World Headquarters announced that it has established a disaster relief fund to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The Chabad Disaster Relief Fund will accept contributions “earmarked for relief aid for victims of Katrina and to the rebuilding of the Jewish community facilities destroyed by the hurricane,” said Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of the agencies in charge of the Chabad-Lubavitch representatives worldwide.

As Chabad representatives of all the affected states coordinate with Chabad Houses in cities where evacuees are temporarily being housed, helping them find food and lodging, they anticipate a severe crisis in the aftermath of the hurricane.

Ultra-Orthodox Jew is first Hassid
to be named dean of U.S. law school

Aaron Twerski was appointed dean of the Hofstra University School of Law on Tuesday, making him the first Hassidic Jew to be dean of an American law school, the New York Daily News reported this week.

Twerski earned his law degree in 1965, and has taught at Hofstra University School of Law and other law schools, including Harvard, Cornell and the University of Michigan.

“When I tried to get into the teaching profession, I faced pretty substantial discrimination,” he told the Daily News. “I was told quite directly that it was because of the way that I was dressed.”

Twerski’s said that his goals for the law school include expanding programs in business litigation, family law and international law.

Police arrest three in Kiev beating

Three people were arrested Tuesday night in connection with the brutal Sunday beating of two yeshiva students in downtown Kiev, Army Radio reported.

One of two young Jewish men beaten in downtown Kiev on Sunday evening was reportedly in “very serious condition” on Monday, the latest victim of anti-Semitism in Ukraine.

The man was identified in an Israel Radio report as 28-year-old yeshiva student Mordechai Ben-Avraham and by Interfax as Mordekhay Molozhenov. According to one report, he and/or his colleague is an Israeli citizen.

American immigrant sets himself on fire in Jerusalem

A 30-year-old American immigrant set himself on fire outside his Jerusalem ulpan Wednesday, critically injuring himself, in protest over Israel’s pullout from Gaza, police and rescue officials said.

The single Jewish man, who moved to Israel last year and was studying Hebrew at the city’s popular ‘Ulpan Etzion,’ was gravely injured in the afternoon incident, suffering from first-degree burns on 70 percent of his body.

Communities open doors to New Orleans Jews

Adam Bronstone barely slept last night.

After evacuating New Orleans and heading west to Houston on Saturday to avoid Hurricane Katrina, he had a lot on his mind.

“You’re worried about where it’s going to hit,” said Bronstone, director of communications for the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. “You’re worried about the place you live in; the place you work; the synagogue I go to, which is near the lake; the federation office, which is on a beautiful campus that’s only three years old and is also near the lake. I worry about where I’m going to be next week.”

Jewish cemetery in Berlin decayed

Berlin officials have backed a movement to have the city`s Jewish cemetery declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The 104-acre Weissensee cemetery has become so overgrown with ivy that many areas are difficult to get to, Deutsche Welle reports. Gravestones have fallen over, and inscriptions are almost illegible from weathering on many of them.

Iraqi Jews to demand compensation for lost assets

Leaders of the Iraqi Jewish community from around the world are to meet soon in London to plan a strategy to demand compensation for lost assets, potentially in the billions of dollars, from the Iraqi government, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

Two meetings have been scheduled for September 18 and 19 to discuss the demands of the Jews from Arab countries and to bring to the forefront a political swap.

Iraqi-born Jew Mordechai Ben-Porat, chairman of Israel’s Center for the Heritage of Babylonian Jewry, organized the first meeting.

Committee hears from evacuees in Jerusalem

The State Comptroller’s Committee is asking the government and the Disengagement Authority to improve its treatment of the Gaza Strip evacuees.

“There’s a long list of problems, some of them grave, that need immediate attention,” said committee chairman MK Meli Polishook-Bloch (Shinui).

From the family that had to wait for more than four hours – in the middle of the night – for a key to their hotel room, to the family that didn’t know when their son’s remains would be dug up from the Neveh Dekalim graveyard, committee members on Tuesday heard an array of complaints from the evacuees.

Oregon synagogue vandalized in hate crime

Two brothers and a third man have been charged with various crimes after rocks engraved with Nazi symbols were thrown through windows at a synagogue during a religious service.

Jacob Albert Laskey, 25, his brother, Gabriel Doyle Laskey, 20, and Gerald Anthony Poundstone, 27, all were charged with conspiracy to violate civil rights in federal grand jury indictments unsealed Tuesday.

Jacob Laskey also was charged with two counts of obstruction of justice relating to witness intimidation, three counts of solicitation relating to attempts to kill potential witnesses, solicitation to communicate a bomb threat intended to obstruct a federal grand jury investigation, and unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon.

Jews attack two Arab residents of Israel

A Jewish group attacked two Arab residents of Israel, from Ar’ara village, in the north of Israel, while the residents were working at a public park in Ramat Gan city.

The two residents, Mohammad Yasser, and Hazim Omar, were working at the public park when a group of over 40 Jews attacked and punched them.

One of the victims managed to escape, and ran towards Ramat Gan police station to report the attack.