In the tense landscape of the Middle East, there is little room left for Jewish Arabs, a tiny minority in this country as well as in places like Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. But in Bahrain, the king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, has taken unprecedented steps for an Arab leader to show his support for his dwindling Jewish population. Last year, he appointed a Jewish woman, Houda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, as ambassador to the United States, the first Jewish ambassador posted abroad by any Arab country.

The Shiites, though, apparently aren’t so sure about how tolerant the atmosphere really is.

There is also some resentment at the king’s support for the small Jewish community. Bahrain is hot with sectarian tensions: the king, a Sunni Muslim, is accused of discriminating against Shiite Muslims, who make up a majority of the native population. Shiites are barred from almost all positions in the military and security services, and they say they are not given the same employment and education opportunities as their Sunni neighbors.

Shiites complain that the 36 Jews are treated better than they are, and that the king’s Jewish outreach is intended to make Bahrain appear to be a tolerant society, papering over the systemic discrimination they say they experience.

[a] man who claims he returned to his Catholic roots after divorcing a Jewish woman was granted permission to take his 3-year-old daughter to Catholic church, despite his ex-wife’s wishes.Joseph Reyes, who baptized his 3-year-old daughter without her mother’s permission, faced jail time after a Cook County judge granted his ex a temporary restraining order barring him from exposing the child to any religion other than Judaism. (empahsis mine)

I don’t know what’s worse: the particulars of the case or the name someone gave to the url over at The Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/13/joseph-reyes-can-take-jew_n_536311.html
(emphasis mine).

Are you telling me this is descriptive of the story’s content? I think not.

One Torah, said to have been in Auschwitz, has been in the ark at one of New York’s most prominent synagogues since 2008. A second Torah joined it on Monday night, as the synagogue, Central Synagogue in Manhattan, observed Holocaust Remembrance Week.

It has a back story — one that the rabbi, Peter J. Rubinstein, hopes will prove less problematic than the first one’s, which, it turns out, may not be entirely believable.

The Law and Order plot (Season 16, “Bible Story”) involves “the murder of a man found desecrating a Torah outside of a synagogue is tied to the feud between a devout Jewish business owner and his more secular cousin”. There’s a further discussion of the plot and Judaism here.

Under oath,  Rabbi Geller (Allan Miller) admitted that he and Speicher’s father actually purchased the Chumash  in a used book store after failing to locate the hidden one during their trip to Poland  Astonished, prosecutor Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) demanded to know why they would fabricate the story that it was the real hidden Chumash?

“How do I explain this to you, Mr. McCoy?,” Rabbi Geller responded. “The Bible is full of stories that may be apocryphal.  Do we believe that Methuselah lived 900 years or that Moses parted the Red Sea?  Their truth is in the inspiration that we gather from them.  And this particular book inspired a lot of people.  Even if it isn’t the same book, it is a symbol of our survival.  I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”

Oy.

The old man with the Santa Claus beard pulled a black yarmulke from the trunk of his Cadillac and limped across the street.

Hundreds of people had gathered outside an old synagogue in Boyle Heights for a program that looked back at the days when the neighborhood — now overwhelmingly Latino and Catholic — was the center of Jewish life in Los Angeles.