Barbara Brotman
By Barbara Brotman
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Fast Forward Faith leaders gather to honor Chicago civil rights leader Rabbi Robert J. Marx
Civil rights leaders from multiple communities will gather in Chicago to pay tribute to the late Rabbi Robert J. Marx, founder of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and a towering figure in the city’s pursuit of social justice. The public memorial, to be held June 27 at Beth Shalom B’Nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Community…
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News Remembering Rabbi Robert Marx, who marched with King, called on Jews to side with the oppressed
When Rabbi Robert Marx died last week at his Michigan home at the age of 93, he left behind a history of social justice activism in Chicago. It began in 1966, when he watched Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. lead a march through a hostile white neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side. “What I saw in…
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News A viral video inspires a Jewish neighborhood’s former residents to help revitalize it
Myra Friedman clicked on the video, and there it was: the old neighborhood, the high school clubs, the gray jackets with pink lettering, the shopping trips to Woolworth’s and Kresge’s, the multiple synagogues. The 1950s and ‘60s in Jewish Chicago were back, in a documentary playing on her computer in L.A., and on laptops, tablets,…
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Culture The Maccabees Were On The Wrong Side of History — So Why Do We Still Celebrate Hanukkah?
Each year, when Hanukkah rolls around, I feel a certain sense of unease. Hmmm. A battle between Jewish zealots and Jews who wanted to partake of the richness of the Greek world around them. I have a feeling I’m on the wrong side of this, Hanukkah-wise. “You like wine?” my friend John, who is of…
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Culture Why Sukkot Is the Most Magical Holiday of All
‘I can’t wait for Sukkot.” An expression of anticipatory excitement coming from a fellow member of my temple? Our rabbi? My Orthodox cousins? It was the 13-year-old son of our non-Jewish neighbors. And another piece of evidence of a remarkable phenomenon our family has discovered about the holiday: That it is magic. No, it’s not…
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Culture Confessions of a Haggadah Hoarder
You can see life in all sorts of ways — in photos, through journals, in stories told and memories shared. But I can see mine in a large plastic storage box in my basement. There it is, on the floor behind the furnace: my life in Passover Haggadot. Did I say one bin? I meant…
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