Mordecai Specktor

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About me

Mordecai Specktor is the editor of American Jewish World.

Hava Nagila (The Movie) will be screened May 23 at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis

By Mordecai Specktor, American Jewish World

Hava nagila, hava nagila (Let us rejoice, let us rejoice) / Hava nagila ve-nismecha (Let us rejoice and be glad)

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OPINION | Gun control efforts get shot down

By Mordecai Specktor, American Jewish World

On Sept. 27, 2012, a recently terminated employee at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis went out to his car for a handgun, then returned to the workplace and gunned down Reuven Rahamim, the company’s founder, four other employees and a UPS driver who happened to be making a delivery. The shooter, Andrew Engeldinger, then shot himself to death.

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Party like it's 1929: Max Raabe and the 12-piece Palast Orchester bring the music of a bygone era in Germany to the Dakota Jazz Club on April 7

By Mordecai Specktor, American Jewish World

Max Raabe and Palast Orchester recreate the music of Germany’s Weimar era. (Photo: Gregor Hohenberg)

Singer Max Raabe stands erect before the microphone, garbed in a tuxedo and tails with his blonde hair slicked back, and croons songs that were the rage of Berlin during the 1920s and ’30s, the time of the Weimar Republic.

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Trumpeter Avishai Cohen will perform with the SFJAZZ Collective March 19 at the Dakota

By Mordecai Specktor, American Jewish World

Avishai Cohen: The swing is in the hummus. (Photo: Ariel Efron)

Avishai Cohen is feeling under the weather. During a recent telephone interview with the AJW from his home in Tel Aviv, he sounds a little groggy, and he apologizes for his diminished physical state.

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OPINION | Legalize marriage for all, say Republicans

By Mordecai Specktor, American Jewish World

Thinking about same-sex marriage is changing in the United States. For example, there was the front-page headline in Tuesday’s edition of the New York Times: “Republicans Sign Brief in Support of Gay Marriage.”

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Madame President: Sandy Pappas is the first Jewish woman to serve as president of the Minnesota Senate

By Mordecai Specktor, American Jewish World

Sen. Sandy Pappas has been elected to serve as the president of the Minnesota Senate for the 2013-2014 biennium, when the DFL Party controls both houses in the Legislature and the governor’s office. (Photo courtesy of Minnesota State Senate)

Sen. Sandra L. Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, has a spacious office in the Capitol, just down the hall from the House and Senate chambers. She is the second Jewish president of the Minnesota Senate — the late Sen. Allen Spear represented a Minneapolis district in the Senate for 28 years, and served as president for eight years, from 1992 to 2000.

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OPINION | Minnesota confronts guns

By Mordecai Specktor, American Jewish World

In early January, state Rep. Michael Paymar, DFL-St. Paul, sent me an e-mail, complementing my editorial about the horrific mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. Paymar wrote that, as the incoming chair of the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee, he planned to hold hearings “on gun control, school security, lack of resources for families with mental health problems, the need for training at identifying people with domestic abuse backgrounds and troubled employees, etc.”

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Update: Plaintiffs will likely appeal court ruling in ConAgra/Hebrew National lawsuit

By Mordecai Specktor, American Jewish World

On Jan. 31, U.S. District Court Judge Donovan W. Frank today granted ConAgra Foods’ motion to dismiss the class action lawsuit brought by consumers who alleged that Hebrew National sold hot dogs and other meat products that were not “100% kosher,” as the company claimed in its advertising.

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OPINION | Native issues in the halls of government: Idle No More, and Sen. Daniel Inouye

By Mordecai Specktor, The Circle

Idle No More

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Minneapolis attorney Steve Kaplan helps to free death row inmate Damon Thibodeaux, who had been wrongly convicted of rape and murder

By Mordecai Specktor, American Jewish World

Steve Kaplan (left), a lawyer with Fredrikson & Byron, led his firm’s efforts to exonerate Louisiana death row inmate Damon Thibodeaux. (Photo by Mordecai Specktor)

For more than a century, juries in criminal cases in the United States have been instructed that defendants are entitled to the “presumption of innocence”: The state has the responsibility to prove that a person accused of a crime is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

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