BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

How 'Christian' of them... Where I grew up - Baptists were the predominant denomination... ... and they wonder why I left to live in NYC as soon as I was financially independent? by E.B. SOLOMONT Members of the extremist Westboro Baptist Church, known for its anti-gay and anti-Semitic rhetoric, protested in front of several Jewish institutions in New York on Tuesday. A handful of protestors from the Kansas-based church turned out, toting signs that read "God Hates Jews" and "God Hates Obama." With plans to protest in front of the Jewish Historical Society, Drisha Institute, and others, they arrived mid-morning at Temple Shearith Israel on the Upper West Side. From there, they went to the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan, the site of another protest by Westboro members around two weeks ago. In an email to the community, JCC Executive Director Rabbi Joy Levitt urged visitors to calmly enter the building to avoid incident. Citing the JCC's beefed up se...

Yet FauxBama still wants Gitmo detainees released into the U.S. population. Let us pray. The four men were ex-convicts who envisioned themselves as holy warriors, ambitious enough to concoct a plot to blow up synagogues and military planes, authorities said. But they were amateurs every step of the way. They had trouble finding guns and bought cameras at Wal-Mart to photograph their targets. One was a convicted purse snatcher, another smoked marijuana the day the plot was to be carried out. Muslims fueled by hatred of America and Jews, they spent months scouting targets and securing what they thought was a surface-to-air missile system and powerful explosives — all under the watch of an FBI informant. The four were arrested late Wednesday outside a synagogue in the Bronx, following a long line of homegrown, headline-making terror plots since Sept. 11 that never came close to reality because the FBI inserted itself in the earliest stages. The bombs they planted outside two synagogues We...

Leaders Lift Spirit in Orthodox Women's Section By Abigail Klein Leichman Sara Hurwitz will never be an NFL linebacker. Elana Stein Hain cannot be the queen of England. Just as these are accepted as unattainable goals, so are certain leadership roles in an Orthodox Jewish synagogue. Judaism's Oral Law, which the Orthodox follow stringently, defines formal public prayer as incumbent upon men and optional for women. The reason isn't as clearly defined; it may be to free women for household and childrearing tasks, or it may be a nod to their innately deeper spirituality. Regardless, the law maintains that people who are not obligated in prayer may not lead those who are. But even if they can't earn the titles of "rabbi" or "cantor" as their Conservative and Reform peers do, modern Orthodox women such as Hurwitz and Hain are finding ways to put their professional experience and advanced religious education to work within the traditional synagogue framewo...