The New York Times had a number of interesting Jewish-related stories in recent days:

Several Jewish-related items appeared over the weekend in The New York Times:

The latest in Jews-related news from the NYT:

• Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.
• Israel’s outgoing U.N. ambassador, Dan Gillerman, does the Q & A in the Sunday magazine.
• A profile of the woman leading the effort to bring faith to the Democratic Party.
• Simcha Felder one of three Dems fighting for Brooklyn state senate seat.
• The NY Times reports on the ongoing feud between an Orthodox synagogue and a lingerie shop situated side-by-side on the Venice Beach boardwalk.
• The Travel section: You and Tel Aviv, perfect together.
• On the Weddings/Celebrations page: a Jewish gay couple in Los Angeles ties the knot.
• Is the new Botox kosher?

The New York Times has had several items of interest over the past few days:

• The last Jews of Baghdad have become the fearful few.
• P. W. Singer and Elina Noor argue that the U.S. is making a strategic mistake by describing terrorists as jihadists.
• Organizers of the Salute to Israel Parade wonder why Israelis never seem to turn out.
• Thomas Friedman says Mr. Obama would do himself a big favor by shifting his focus from the list of enemy leaders he would talk with to the list of things he would do as president to generate more leverage for America.
• A look a The Journey, a megachurch of mostly younger evangelicals, that is representative of a new generation that refuses to put politics at the center of its faith and rejects identification with the religious right.
• The U.S. State Dept. reinstated seven Fullbright scholarships awarded to Palestinian students after it had withdrawn them last week citing Israel’s refusal to allow the students to leave the Gaza Strip.
• The public editor of the New York Times discusses how the paper was taken to task over an Op-Ed article by Edward N. Luttwak, a military historian, who argued that any hopes that a President Barack Obama might improve relations with the Islamic world were unrealistic because Muslims would be “horrified” once they learned that the candidate had abandoned the Islam of his father and embraced Christianity as a young adult. (Click here and here for response in the blogosphere).