Jordana Horn
By Jordana Horn
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Opinion Why Jewish Baby Names Are So Important
What’s in a name? Roses by any other name would, as the bard would have it, smell as sweet. Because after all, a name cannot change a person’s inner essence and soul. Or can it? These are the questions that keep you up late at night as you wonder what you will name your unborn…
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News Tzedakah Ain’t Just for Jewish Millionaires
Whether it was implicitly or explicitly taught to me, I don’t remember, but somehow, I always knew: The people who hold the Torahs during the reading of the Kol Nidre prayer are the congregation’s big machers. A few years ago, as I stood at Kol Nidre, my eyes swept over the bimah. Even I, a…
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Opinion There’s Jewish Life Outside the Orthodox, David Brooks!
In early March, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a column titled “The Orthodox Surge.” In it, he detailed his visit to Brooklyn’s fancy kosher supermarket Pomegranate. He waxed rhapsodic over everything from “dairy-free cheese puffs” to “a long aisle bursting with little bags of chips and pretzels, suitable for putting into school lunch…
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Opinion Confessions of a Synagogue Membership Hoarder
My family belongs to two synagogues. In two years, when our two smallest children start going to synagogue nursery school, we’re probably going to join the nursery school’s synagogue, too. Have I mentioned that we are also being actively recruited as members of a fourth synagogue? Up front, let me be clear: Not everyone should…
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Opinion A Jewish Summer Camp That Doesn’t Feel Like One
‘Please can we go to this camp?” my older son asked me after a parlor meeting in my town with the director of an overnight camp. “I really want to go!” my younger son said. I wasn’t ready for this. Sure, one could argue that when you go to a parlor meeting about an overnight…
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Opinion When Mommies Lay Down Their Spears
If you want to generate a spike in traffic to your website, to sell more copies of your paper or magazine, or to get more ”likes” on Facebook, you should write a screed taking down the way particular people parent their children. “Mommy wars” trigger media feeding frenzies whenever one of them rears its soft-spotted…
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Opinion Why I Can’t Quit B’nai Jeshurun
“You’re taking them to BJ after what the rabbis there did?” the text message from my ex-husband read. He was referring to the fact that I’d taken my two boys to Shabbat services that morning at the Upper West Side congregation B’nai Jeshurun. And he wasn’t the only one expressing disbelief. “If MY rabbis wrote…
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The Schmooze Nora Ephron Made Genius Look Easy
My Facebook feed blew up last night with appreciative status updates in tribute to Nora Ephron. The burst of activity made me wonder whether everyone’s Facebook feed was full of Ephron’s urbane wit, or if things were quieter in places where people prefer NASCAR to Zabar’s. Today, the day after her untimely death from illness…
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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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News They texted about Torah and mitzvahs. Feds say they were insider trading
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Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
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Culture At Eurovision, Israel’s near triumph shows the limits of tolerance
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Film & TV On a new Israeli TV show, the secret lives of Orthodox Jewish atheists
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Fast Forward Feds charge man with organizing synagogue attacks in Europe and NYC on behalf of Iran
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Yiddish אַ שוועבנדיקע הילצערנע שיל בײַם ווענעציער ביענאַליי פֿון 2026 A floating wooden synagogue at the 2026 Venice Biennale
אין פֿאַרגלײַך מיט די פֿיזישע פּאַוויליאָנען געשאַפֿן פֿון אָפֿיציעלע לענדער איז דער ייִדישלאַנד־פּאַוויליאָן געבויט אויף אידעעס
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News Mamdani Nakba Day video prompts pushback from Jewish leaders amid rising tensions