
Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. He covers Jewish religious organizations, synagogue life, anti-Semitism and the Orthodox world. If you have any tips, you can email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aefeldman.
Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. He covers Jewish religious organizations, synagogue life, anti-Semitism and the Orthodox world. If you have any tips, you can email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aefeldman.
Gray’s Anatomy. Roget’s Thesaurus. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Some reference books are so famous, they are known simply by the last name of their author. Add to that list Jastrow’s, a dictionary of the Talmud. Long a requirement for Anglophone students of Jewish law, Rabbi Marcus Jastrow’s two-volume work — and its entries for 35,000 words…
A petition is calling for a major ultra-Orthodox umbrella group to condemn anti-vaccination on the eve of the group’s national convention. An anonymous person calling themselves Dovid Fields started a Change.org peitition to get Agudath Israel of America to state that vaccines are not harmful. Anti-vaccine conspiracy theories are popular in some segments of the…
The latest cover for TIME Magazine features Rabbi Sharon Brous, of the Los Angeles congregation Ikar, with a cover story called “Who Gets To Be An American?” The cover is based on Norman Rockwell’s famous 1943 “Freedom of Worship” painting, from his series of paintings on the Four Freedoms outlined by President Franklin D. Roosevelt…
The U.S. House has banned hats of any kind for 183 years. Now Ilhan Omar, one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress this year, is set to help change that year. Omar (D-Minn.) and Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are partnering on proposing legislation to allow lawmakers to wear religious headwear in Congress, Roll…
Yehuda Webster has a routine when it comes to Torahs. Just about every month, he picks up a rented Torah in a plastic sleeve from J. Levine Books and Judaica in Manhattan. He uses the Torahs for the bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies he arranges through an organization he founded, for families that don’t belong…
Donald Trump has endorsed prison reform legislation, something Jared Kushner has been working on for the better part of a year. Trump is hailing the prison reform bill as a major piece of bipartisan legislation. “This group reached a bipartisan agreement — did I hear the word bipartisan? Did I hear that word?” Trump told…
Shabbat was approaching, but Rabbi Jeffrey Myers didn’t have time to write his Saturday morning sermon. And this wasn’t just any Shabbat — it was the first Shabbat after the shooting that killed seven of his congregants, and four others. But on Friday afternoon, he officiated at a funeral. Then he was attending a shiva…
Cecil. David. Rose. Joyce. Sylvan. Bernice. Last Saturday, those six, along with seven other worshippers killed inside the Tree of Life synagogue building on October 27, became part of the long list of Jewish martyrs. But before that, they were six friendly faces that the middle schoolers of nearby Community Day School knew from attending…
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