Jews

As a boy, Father William Sanchez sensed he was different. His Catholic family spun tops on Christmas, shunned pork and whispered of a past in medieval Spain. If anyone knew the secret, they weren't telling, and Sanchez stopped asking. Then three years ago, after watching a program on genealogy, Sanchez sent for a DNA kit that could help track a person's background through genetic footprinting. He soon got a call from Bennett Greenspan, owner of the Houston-based testing company.

Nearly all the considerable attention generated by Peter Beinart's "The Crisis of Zionism" has focused on its final 81/2 pages. There, warning that the "hour is late," he calls for liberal supporters of Israeli democracy to engage in "direct action" against Israeli occupation of the territories occupied after the June 1967 war. To save Israel from what he sees as the corrosive effects of settlement in the West Bank, he says, American Jews should boycott...

Today, a century and a half after Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," the overwhelming majority of scientists in the United States accept Darwinian evolution as the basis for understanding how life on Earth developed. But although evolutionary theory is often portrayed as antithetical to religion, it has not destroyed the religious faith of the scientific community. According to a survey of members of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year, a majority of scientists (51%)

Sundown Friday marks the beginning of Passover, the commemoration of the Jews' emancipation from enslavement in ancient Egypt. This year Passover falls on a day of enormous significance in the struggle for freedom in modern Egypt — April 6. That date is synonymous with the April 6 Youth Movement — formed in 2008 and named for the date of a planned strike to support Egyptian workers — that became the backbone of last year's Tahrir revolution that...

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

Two years ago, Rabbi Moshe Zigelman went to prison rather than testify against fellow Jews in a federal tax-evasion case and receive a lesser punishment. Now, federal prosecutors are threatening him with a return to jail unless the 64-year-old devout Hasid agrees to testify before a grand jury regarding the federal government's ongoing probe of tax evasion in his Orthodox Jewish sect. On Wednesday, they will ask a judge to order him to testify or be found in contempt. His attorney says Zigelman, a teacher of scripture and son of Holocaust survivors, will again refuse, citing his religious principles.

The details of the mural that helped save Bill Salamon's life escape him now. * It took up one wall in the cafeteria where his Nazi captors would enjoy their meals. A picture of a German soldier sitting on a bench, his arm casually draped around a young girl's shoulder, he recalls. He was 16 when he painted it. "I probably survived the concentration camp because I knew how to paint and draw," says Salamon.

The Vatican's influential Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who upset Jewish leaders last year with published remarks suggesting that Judaism finds its fulfillment in Christianity, told reporters here that Roman Catholics do respect the Jews' understanding of their own Scripture and faith. "They are the owners of the Old Testament," he said.

Christians know that the Christian calendar starts from the birth of Jesus. Muslims know that the Muslim calendar begins with the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina. But most Jews would be hard pressed to explain what happened 5750 years ago and why the Jewish calendar begins with that event, which will be commemorated this year on Friday evening. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins the introspective 10-day period called the High Holy Days, culminating at sundown on Yom Kippur, Oct.

'Jews on Vinyl' Where: Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday Price: $10; $8 members, $6 students Info: (310) 440-4500; http://www.skirball.org

Is this a buy sign for bread crumbs? Billionaire Warren Buffett purchased bread crumbs -- and just about anything else that has wheat and the other grains forbidden to Jews during the observance of Passover -- from a local rabbi, Jonathan Gross of Beth Israel Synagogue in Omaha, Neb. It is ritual that goes on worldwide in Jewish communities. Families designate rabbis to find a non-Jew such as Buffett to purchase their chametz, or food made with leavening, before the holiday.

This post has been corrected.  See note below for details. Jew Pond likely will not be Jew Pond much longer. Mont Vernon, N.H., voted Tuesday night to petition to have the moniker changed. It was not a unanimous vote. Feelings were mixed on the subject in the small New England town. "Here in New England, there's a lot of history and tradition," Rich Masters, health officer for Mont Vernon, told The Times on Wednesday, "and a lot of folks highly value that.

Steve Bridges Impersonator of George W. Bush Steve Bridges, 48, a comic actor and impersonator who was best known for his mimicry of President George W. Bush and appeared alongside the chief executive at the 2006 White House Correspondents Assn. dinner, was found dead Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. Bridges had recently returned home from China, where he had been performing, said his brother Phillip. He appeared to have died of natural causes, but an autopsy is scheduled.

Taking baptisms too far Re "Mormon Church apologizes," Feb. 15 I am insulted to my core by the Mormon Church's posthumous baptism of Jews, including the parents of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. My father's family was totally decimated by the Nazis, and so was part of my mother's family. Are we living in the 21st century or in the Dark Ages? This is cynicism at its highest form. It also exposes the Mormon Church as a lying entity. In the past, the church promised that this ghoulish practice of baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims would stop, but it didn't.

"In Darkness" is a pitiless glimpse into the inferno, into hell not only on earth but below it. Based on a true story, it takes you into the sewers of the Polish city of Lvov during World War II, a place where a group of Jews lived for more than a year under circumstances that are almost unimaginable. But, as directed by the veteran Agnieszka Holland, "In Darkness" is not a typical Holocaust film. For one thing, even more than in her 1990 film "Europa, Europa," Holland's directing style is cool, almost dispassionate.

As a child growing up in Kaifeng in central China, Jin Jin was constantly reminded of her unusual heritage. "We weren't supposed to eat pork, our graves were different from other people, and we had a mezuza on our door," said the 25-year-old, referring to the prayer scroll affixed to doorways of Jewish homes. Her father told her of a faraway land called Israel that he said was her rightful home, she recalls. But "we didn't know anything about daily prayers or the weekly reading of the Torah.

In his latest book, "Jesus of Nazareth, Part II," Pope Benedict XVI says that the Jews, as a people, did not kill Jesus. This is ? fortunately ? not a new pronouncement from the Roman Catholic Church. For more than four decades, it has been officially condemning anti-Semitism and rejecting any interpretation of the New Testament that held all Jews, then or now, responsible for the death of Jesus. Since Vatican II's landmark 1965 declaration on Catholicism and non-Christian religions addressed this issue, church officials have sought to forge better relations with Jews by reinterpreting spiritual texts, expressing deep sorrow over the Holocaust and calling on Christians who by their actions or inactions were complicit in the events of the Holocaust to repent.

Gregory Cochran has always been drawn to puzzles. This one had been gnawing at him for several years: Why are European Jews prone to so many deadly genetic diseases? Tay-Sachs disease. Canavan disease. More than a dozen more. It offended Cochran's sense of logic. Natural selection, the self-taught genetics buff knew, should flush dangerous DNA from the gene pool. Perhaps the mutations causing these diseases had some other, beneficial purpose. But what?

As U.S. District Judge Margaret Morrow contemplated federal law from her bench Wednesday, more than a dozen ultra-Orthodox Jewish men watched. One held open a gilt-edged, elaborately embossed copy of the Shulchan Aruch, a book of Jewish law, tracing lines of the Hebrew text with his finger. Appearing before the judge was Rabbi Moshe Zigelman, 64, a devout Hasid who was refusing to testify before a federal grand jury, citing an ancient Jewish principle that forbids informing on other Jews.

Two years ago, Rabbi Moshe Zigelman went to prison rather than testify against fellow Jews in a federal tax-evasion case and receive a lesser punishment. Now, federal prosecutors are threatening him with a return to jail unless the 64-year-old devout Hasid agrees to testify before a grand jury regarding the federal government's ongoing probe of tax evasion in his Orthodox Jewish sect. On Wednesday, they will ask a judge to order him to testify or be found in contempt. His attorney says Zigelman, a teacher of scripture and son of Holocaust survivors, will again refuse, citing his religious principles.