Videos

Union Square's High-Concept Sukkahs

By Nate Lavey

On September 19, the finalists of the Sukkah City design competition unveiled their re-imagined sukkahs in New York’s Union Square. Locals and tourists alike rubbed shoulders to get a closer look at the ritual huts, which transformed the downtown park into an architectural showcase.Read More

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Designing a Kosher Sukkah

By Gabrielle Birkner

Sukkah City’s rabbinic consultant, Dani Passow spoke recently with the Forward about the Jewish laws governing sukkah-building, which of the winning designs took the most work to be made kosher and what contemporary architects have in common with Talmudic-era rabbis.Read More

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Eight Months Later, Haiti Struggles as Never Before

By Jane Eisner

It took us several hours to drive from Port-au-Prince to the tiny village of Monwi Mon Ivwa. On rare stretches, the road was flat and paved, occasionally punctuated by a house standing half-finished and empty, a frustrating hint of what could be if Haiti were a normal place. But mostly the road was thick with stones and ditches, difficult for even the scrawny resident goats and donkeys to navigate as they rummaged for food.Read More

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Yid Lit: Rachel Shukert

By Allison Gaudet Yarrow

In her new memoir, “Everything is Going to Be Great,” author and performer Rachel Shukert travels to Europe after college to “escape the weight of [her] own expectations,” which involves no small measure of drinking, gallivanting and sleeping with (non-American) boys.Read More

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I’ll Take Belgian Waffles With My Falafel, Please

By Maia Efrem and Laurie Stern

At lunchtime on a street corner on the west side of Manhattan, a spot not typically known for its cuisine, people with palates from East and West line the sidewalk for one thing — falafel.Read More

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Laurie Strongin Discusses Her Fight To Save Her Son

By Nate Lavey

In this audio slideshow, author Laurie Strongin speaks with the Forward’s Nate Lavey about her efforts to save her son Henry, who was diagnosed with Fanconi Anemia — a genetic disease most common in Ashkenazic Jews.Read More

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Decades in Transition: A Lens on Ethiopian-Israelis

By Nate Lavey

Irene Fertik is an American photojournalist who has been documenting the Ethiopian-Israeli community for the past 20 years. She’s captured the community’s highs and lows as they transition from an agricultural to an industrial society. Despite the immense challenges facing Ethiopian-Israelis, Fertik says the community is incredibly resilient, proud of their history and optimistic about the future. Her work will be on view at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C. throughout the month of September. She’s also compiling her photographs into a book that she plans to call “Tesfa to Tikva: From Hope to Hope.”Read More

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Fat of the Land

By Ezra Glinter and Devra Ferst

David Freedenberg told us how he once applied for a job with the New York Police Department’s counter-terrorism unit. He didn’t get the spot, which he says is just as well. “If I got that job, I would go to sleep at night thinking about Times Square blowing up,” he remarked. “Now I think about pizza and cannoli and pickles.”Read More

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On the Hudson River, Hoenlein Launches a ‘Flotilla’ for Gilad Shalit

By Gal Beckerman

Of all the things I never expected I’d hear coming out of the mouth of Malcolm Hoenlein, the powerful executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, “It’s time to set sail!” was certainly near the top of the list. But there he was, jacket and tie removed, a blue captain’s hat with the words “Israeli Navy” stitched in gold replacing the yarmulke he usually wears. He was standing at the bow of a rickety boat called the “Queen of Hearts,” which was about to make its way around the tip of Manhattan on a swelteringly hot June 24.Read More

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Rubashkin’s Jail Sentence Denounced by Angry Haredim

By Gal Beckerman

A wave of outrage rippled through New York’s Haredi community, crossing the usual ultra-Orthodox divisions, in response to the June 21 announcement that Agriprocessors executive Sholom Rubashkin would be sent to a federal jail for 27 years for bank fraud, with no possibility of parole.Read More

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