Mordechai Lightstone
By Mordechai Lightstone
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Opinion Why Does No One Care About Anti-Semitic Attacks Against Hasidim?
The last few weeks have been a dangerous time to be a Jew in New York. Well, that’s not exactly right. They’ve been a dangerous time to be a Hasidic Jew in Crown Heights. On April 14, 21 and 30th and on May 1st of 2018, Hasidic Jews in Crown Heights were attacked and beaten….
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Opinion What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Crown Heights
I was 7 years old when I first heard of Crown Heights. At the time, growing up in Los Angeles, my entire world felt Jewish. There were Hollywood Jews who worked in the industry like my parents, Russian Jews down the block from our West Hollywood home and Hasidic Jews on Fairfax. Sure, there were…
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Opinion Orthodox Belief in God and Faith Is Spreading — Got a Problem With That?
Reading two recent breathless headlines in the Forward, it would seem that Judaism, at least as practiced in America, is somehow in mortal danger of being co-opted and radically changed by Orthodox Jewry. An article by Nathan Guttman boldly declares that the “Pew Study Finds Orthodox Similar to Evangelical Christians — Not Other Jews.” To…
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Opinion Stop Using Brooklyn Fire To Stoke Anti-Orthodox Hatred
An Orthodox man looks at the scene of the fire in Midwood, Brooklyn / Getty Images You never want Shabbat to end on a tragic note. Yet among the the rush of messages that blipped across my phone when I turned it on Saturday night was news of the death of seven children in Brooklyn’s…
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Opinion Kalamazoo Police Thought My Lulav Was a Sword
Mordechai Lightstone demonstrates the proper use of a lulav I was harassed by the police outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan for using my lulav and etrog. Last Tuesday, while traveling between Chicago and Detroit, my family and I stopped at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo. Traveling with small children is always a challenge, and the museum offered…
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Books YA Romance and ‘Hasidsploitation’
Like No Other By Una Lamarche Razorbill, 352 pages, $17.99 In her new young adult novel, “Like No Other,” author Una Lamarche explores the racial and religious tensions in Crown Heights through the chance encounter of a West Indian boy and a Hasidic girl and the relationship that blossoms between the two. When a hurricane…
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Opinion Shabbat Shalom, Comic Con!
Jewverine displays ‘adamantium’ menorah hands at Comic Con What’s it like to host Shabbat dinner at Comic Con? This year, my wife Chana and I decided to find out. We attended S. Diego Comic Con International, the annual nerd mecca that ran this past weekend and attracts comic book fans and pop culture geeks from…
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Opinion The Perks of Being a Lubavitcher
Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, seen here (at left) in 1993 / Getty Images There’s a hidden perk to being a Lubavitcher, one often not talked about but widely experienced: People like to talk to you. I’ve been called out as a Lubavitcher and brought into impromptu conversations everywhere from a small bridge over the Bled…
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