Jewish

The president is out of town tonight, spending the night alone at his home in Chicago after a day filled with six fundraisers. But his campaign in Washington, D.C. continues.

An events list found at BarackObama.com reveals that eight "Obama Shabbat" dinners will be held this evening, here in Washington, to observe the Jewish sabbath and to "organize our community to help reelect President Barack Obama." The Jewish sabbath is observed from sundown Friday evening to sundown Saturday night. 

On May 7, 2012, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the largest organization of rabbis in the United States, approved a resolution recognizing that the Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation that mandates employers provide access to contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and sterilizations forces many employers to “violate the injunctions of their religion.” The RCA, which represents more than 1,000 Orthodox rabbis, urged the Obama administration to amend the regulation to protect the religious liberties of all employers.

Former Palestinian intelligence official Muhammad Abu Shahala has reportedly been sentenced to death by the Palestinian Authority for selling a Hebron home to Jews. In response, Jewish officials from the community in Hebron are calling for international officials now to get involved—in order to save Abu Shahala’s life.

Juan Williams reviews Stephanie Deutsch's You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South for the Philanthropy Roundtable:

Here's the text of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's powerful Holocaust Remembrance Day speech to his countrymen. Worth reading.

The great tragedy of Yiddish literature is that, at the very moment when it was blossoming into modernity in all genres, its writers, audience, and cultural matrix were completely destroyed by the double knockout punch of German and Soviet anti-Semitism.

For those interested in things Jewish, the formidable literary critic D. G. Myers has provided a terrific guide to the 38 best Jewish books of 2011, ranging from Jewish history to thought to literature.

William McGurn, writing in the Wall Street Journal: 

When Jews begin their Hanukkah celebrations this week, they will commemorate a 2,200-year old revolt led by Judah Maccabee against a Greek empire attempting to crush the Jewish faith. For some, the holiday holds an added resonance, linking their military service to one of the greatest Jewish warriors of all time.

These are the Jews of the United States Marine Corps.

On Friday, President Obama addressed the Union for Reform Judaism's convention. As Jen Rubin notes, "A good two-thirds of the address was devoted to liberal nostrums, reflecting his confidence that no matter how badly he treats the Jewish state, liberal Democratic Jews will stick by him."

Steven Amarnick reviews Gertrude Himmelfarb's The People of the Book in the Wall Street Journal:

The American Jewish Committee responded today to remarks the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, made about anti-Semitism last week in Europe.

Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has recently been going around her home state of Florida trying to convince Jews that Barack Obama is in fact pro-Israel. As the Sun-Sentinel reports, “Democrats hope to avoid losing Jewish voters in South Florida.”