The 27th Annual Alper JCC Jewish Book Festival will celebrate Israel’s 60th through writers that explore Jewish life, religion and political thought. The Festival begins on Thursday, Oct. 18th with historian Michael Oren, the acclaimed author of Six Days of War, a former advisor to Yitzhak Rabin and an…

When he had come to me, no priest had recited any blessings. There had been no feast, no tables laden with festive foods. No wine had flowed into the goblets of invited guests, no flutes had played and no drums had been beaten. Yet I felt wedded to…

In 1954 a rabbi at the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens used his Rosh Hashanah sermon to trumpet the harmony between traditional Judaism and social criticism. "The refusal to be comforted has been the secret passion of our people’s history," he intoned. "We lived in exile for…

Chronicling human depravity Court reporter at "doctors trial' recalls experiences

Twenty-two-year-old Vivien Spitz was sitting in the court in Nuremberg, Germany, crying, but she knew she had to get ahold of herself.

"I was writing, and tears were falling on my notebook," says Spitz, who was a court reporter…