Admissions against interest

New York’s Undocumented Day Laborers Fight for Their Piece of the Big Apple

Teresa’s attitude is not unique. Resentment is high between the Satmar Jews of Williamsburg and a hundred or so Polish day laborers who clean for them. A half-century after the war, the slaughter of their brethren burns the Jews like a live wire. Ask nearly any Satmar to define the neighborhood and he or she will tell you, “We’re a community of Holocaust survivors.” They’re keenly aware that Poland’s large Jewish population was annihilated during the war. Ask the Polish women how they like their work, and many ignore the question: “The Jews blame us for the death camps in Poland,” they say. Echoing the Polish government’s longtime position, they add, “It was the Nazis that killed the Jews. Not the Polish people.”

This “Pearl Harbor” movie still bothers me.

The Disney people re-edited the film for Japanese audiences because of “emotional sensitivity issues.” In other words they softened what was already a cupcake of a movie because Disney wanted to do better in the box offices in the Land of the Rising Sun, which is the largest movie-going country after the USA.

The Unknown Holiday

• The invisibility of Shavuot in the Jewish community is simply the reflection of a wider American problem.

[…] Our communal leaders may express deep concern about Jewish “continuity,” but when they fund Holocaust memorials more lavishly than day schools, we have reason to doubt their sincerity.

An American Jew in … Not Quite Paris

Book writing is a solitary profession. As the sole author of my works, I take the credit, I take the blame. About once a year, usually when my hardcover book is published, I am encouraged to venture out of my cocoon to publicize my work on what is known in the biz as the book tour. I like book tours. They allow me to do some face-to-face interaction with those who buy and read my books. My fans are wonderful — honest and sincere. I get feedback — mostly good, sometimes not so good, but always given with an honorable heart. Why else would they stand in line, sometimes for over an hour, just to have their books inked with my scrawl?

In Israel, Holocaust education has become, for many, a last resort in creating a sense of identity and attachment for a younger generation which has become increasingly alienated from a country which is continually fighting for its existence and to which this same youth is being asked to fight and, perhaps, make the supreme sacrifice. The use of the Israeli flag as a blatant symbol of nationalism during the March of the Living is, at one and the same time, a moment of pride for the youth of a country which rose from the ashes of the mass extermination, but equally a cynical manipulation of history’s greatest human tragedy to promote nationalism and to cover up for the failures of the education system back home in creating a sense of identity and loyalty to the state in which they reside.

Actors gain painful look into the past

FORT WORTH — It’s dress rehearsal at Sage & Silo Theater, and actor Kit Hussey is in the uniform of a Nazi SS captain.

NEW YORK — As the fogs of obfuscation begin to lift from the latest mess of his own peculiar making, former president Bill Clinton is looking like the seasoned snake-oil salesman who has just been sold a pup.